Just When We Think It is Getting Safe Again

North Korea’s Pissing Contest

North Korea threatens war over UN sanctions...

North Korea has announced plans to carry out a third nuclear test as part of "upcoming all-out action" against America. 

Defying a resolution issued by the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that condemned Pyongyang for test-firing a missile in December and tightened existing sanctions on the regime, North Korea's National Defense Commission said the new nuclear test would be part of its action against the "sworn enemy of the Korean people". 

North Korea also vowed to push ahead with launches of more long-range rockets. 

“We do not hide that a variety of satellites and long-range rockets which will be launched by the DPRK one after another and a nuclear test of higher level which will be carried out by it in the upcoming all-out action, a new phase of the anti-US struggle that has lasted century after century, will target against the US, the sworn enemy of the Korean people,” the commission said. 

“Settling accounts with the US needs to be done with force, not with words, as it regards jungle law as the rule of its survival.” 

Describing the UN Security Council as “a marionette of the US,” North Korean state media claimed the resolutions are “products of its blind pursuance of the hostile policy of the US. 

“The UNSC should apologise for its crime of seriously encroaching upon the independence of a sovereign state ... and repeal all the unreasonable ‘resolutions’ at once,” KCNA reported.

Pyongyang also declared that no further talks on removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula are now possible and that a “nuclear test of a higher level” would be carried out. 

Intelligence reports have suggested that the North has been preparing to carry out a new underground nuclear test after global condemnation of the successful launch of a missile on December 12. Pyongyang has claimed that the launch was of a rocket to put a satellite into orbit. 

Disagreement within the UN Security Council - primarily a result of China, which holds a veto, insisting that retaliatory measures be watered down - meant that North Korea has had plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable responses. 

While experts say North Korea does not have the capability to hit the US with its missiles, recent tests and rhetoric indicate the country is working toward that goal.