President Trump said Sunday on Twitter that North Korea has “become a great threat and embarrassment to China,” after the secretive totalitarian nation announced it had detonated a hydrogen bomb and declared the test “a perfect success.”
It was the sixth underground bomb tested since 2006, said North Korea’s state-run TV, and it was the rogue nation’s latest act of defiance in pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles aimed at threatening the U.S.
Mr. Trump has been increasing pressure on China, the top patron of North Korea, to curb the country’s threatening behavior.
“North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States,” Mr. Trump wrote in a series of posts on Twitter. “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”
He also prodded the new president of South Korea against an attempt to accommodate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Mr. Trump wrote.
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The North Korea blast was strong enough to cause earthquakes in the region.
The U.S. Geological Survey said a 6.3 magnitude earthquake was detected at 12:36 p.m. Sunday near North Korea’s known nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, in the county’s northeast region. It had a depth of 14.3 miles.
The “artificial quake” was 9.8 times as powerful as the North’s previous test in September 2016, South Korea’s state weather agency said. That 5.3-magnitude earthquake was about as powerful as the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, which was the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT.
Sunday’s earthquake was felt in northern China in Yanji, near the North Korean border, according to local media.
China’s Earthquake Administration said it had detected a second tremor, just after the first, of 4.6 magnitude, which it termed as “a collapse.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders the national security team is closely monitoring the situation.
“The president and his national security team will have a meeting to discuss further later today,” she said.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called emergency meetings of their national security councils after the test, which is outlawed by U.N. sanctions.
⦁ This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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