North Korea could be preparing for fifth nuclear test, South Korea’s Park warnsa

North Korea appears to be preparing to conduct another nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday, citing signs of increased movement near the North’s nuclear test site.

With a much-hyped congress of the communist Workers’ Party to be held early next month, Kim Jong Un appears to be trying to burnish his credentials, and analysts say a fifth nuclear test would be a sure way to do that.

“Recently, signs of preparations for a fifth nuclear test have been detected,” Park said during a meeting with her aides Monday. “We are in a situation in which we cannot predict what provocations North Korea might conduct to break away from isolation and to consolidate the regime.”

This came after the South Korean Defense Ministry said that North Korea’s next underground nuclear test may be of a miniaturized warhead, rather than of the standard atomic devices it is thought to have detonated ­previously.

“Given the latest developments, North Korea could carry out an underground nuclear warhead test, and we are keeping close tabs on it,” Moon Sang-gyun, a Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters in Seoul on Monday.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported last month that Kim ordered “a nuclear warhead explosion test and a test-fire of several kinds of ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads” to be carried out “in a short time.”

North Korea claims that it has mastered the technology to make nuclear weapons small and light enough to fit on a missile, but there has been no proof. But an increasing number of military top brass and private-sector analysts think that North Korea either will have made or will be on the brink of making such a technological advance soon.

South Korean officials warned Sunday that they had detected a noticeable increase in vehicles and people moving about the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, particularly near its north portal tunnel.

Analysts at 38 North, a website devoted to watching and analyzing North Korea, said that they also saw, in satellite imagery, increased movement around the north portal but that there was little evidence that Pyongyang was planning an imminent nuclear test.

“Nevertheless, that possibility cannot be entirely ruled out since the North may be able to conduct a nuclear test on short notice with few indications that it intends to do so,” Jack Liu, a military analyst, wrote in a note on the site.

A fifth nuclear test would create another conundrum for the international community. Kim’s regime has proved impervious to coordinated efforts to change his calculus when it comes to the country’s nuclear program.

Last month, the U.N. Security Council passed the toughest sanctions yet against North Korea as punishment for its January nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch in February.

Yet Kim has remained defiant, issuing an almost daily barrage of threats and continuing to launch rockets and short-range missiles. An attempt to launch a previously untested intermediate-range ballistic missile last week was deemed to have failed.

At a forum in Seoul, Lim Sung-nam, South Korea’s vice foreign minister, said that more pressure and punishment against North Korea is needed.

“We can no longer afford to be pushed around by North Korea’s deceit and intimidation,” Lim said. “The leadership in Pyongyang must be pressed much harder until it changes its fundamental calculation regarding the value of its nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities.”

In addition to supporting the tough U.N. resolutions, Park’s government has brought in unprecedented bilateral sanctions against North Korea, closing an inter-Korean industrial park and cutting off all humanitarian aid except to babies and pregnant women.

Source: wp

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North Korea resurrects Abraham Lincoln to criticize Obama

North Korea has tried warnings of nuclear attack and racist diatribes to criticize U.S. President Barack Obama. Now it's turning to Abraham Lincoln.

North Korea's state media have constructed an imaginary letter from the 16th U.S. president that attacks Obama's "deception" over Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the latest response from the North to rising animosity with Washington following Pyongyang's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

The letter, posted only in Korean on the DPRK Today website, is likely aimed at a domestic audience. DPRK Today is a relatively little known outlet compared with the North's main Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which outsiders regularly check to find news from the authoritarian country.

The letter is titled "Advice from Lincoln to Obama."

"Hey, Obama," it begins. "I know you have a lot on your mind these days ... I've decided to give you a little advice after seeing you lost in thought before my portrait during a recent Easter Prayer Breakfast."

In the letter, Lincoln derides Obama's Nobel Peace Prize-winning push to build a nuclear-free world by questioning why the United States has not taken the initiative to scale back its nuclear arsenal first, even as it asks countries such as North Korea to scrap their atomic programs.

"If the United States, a country with the world's largest nuclear weapons stockpile, only pays lip service, like a parrot, and doesn't do anything actively, it will be a mockery to the entire world," the letter has Lincoln say.

Although the fake Lincoln criticizes Obama, the North doesn't portray the late president as a good leader.

"Hey, Obama, it's the 21st Century," the letter says. "The tactic by past American presidents, including me, who deceived the people ... is outdated. That doesn't work now. The world doesn't trust an America that doesn't take responsibility for what it says."

North Korea's state media has often used harsh language against U.S. and South Korean leaders in times of tension. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has stepped up rhetoric against Washington and Seoul during their annual springtime military drills, which it calls an invasion rehearsal. The drills are set to end later this month.

In 2014, the North's state news agency, KCNA, called Obama a "monkey." Earlier that year, it called Secretary of State John Kerry a wolf with a "hideous lantern jaw" after U.S. and South Korean troops launched summertime drills.

The North has also called South Korean President Park Geun-hye a "prostitute" numerous times.

Source: AP

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