North Korean leader vows more nuclear bombs

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looked Monday, Jan 11, to milk his country's recent nuclear test as a propaganda victory, praising his scientists and vowing more nuclear bombs a day after the U.S. flew a powerful nuclear-capable warplane close to the North in a show of force, the Associated Press reports.

A standoff between the rival Koreas has deepened since last week's test, the North's fourth. Seoul on Monday continued anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts across the border and announced that it will further limit the entry of South Koreans to a jointly run factory park in North Korea.

Outside North Korea, Kim faces widespread condemnation and threats of heavy sanctions over the North's disputed claim of a hydrogen bomb test. Internally, however, Kim's massive propaganda apparatus has looked to link the test to Kim's leadership so as to glorify him and portray the test as necessary to combat a U.S.-led attempt to topple the North's authoritarian system.

On Monday, Kim took photos with nuclear scientists and technicians involved in the test and praised them for "having glorified" his two predecessors, his late father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, state founder Kim Il Sung, according to the state-run Korean Central news Agency.

Kim earlier called the explosion "a self-defensive step" meant to protect the region "from the danger of nuclear war caused by the U.S.-led imperialists," a separate KCNA dispatch said, according to the AP.

On Sunday, a U.S. B-52 bomber flew low over areas near Seoul, the South Korean capital city only about an hour's drive from the border with the North, a fly-over that North Korea will see as a threat. The B-52 was joined by South Korean F-15 and U.S. F-16 fighters and returned to its base in Guam after the flight, the U.S. military said.

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said the B-52 flight was intended to underscore to South Korean allies "the deep and enduring alliance that we have with them." Interviewed on CNN, McDonough said the United States would work with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia "to deeply isolate the North Koreans" and "squeeze" them until they live up to prior commitments to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

World powers are looking for ways to punish the North over its disputed bomb test, which, even if not of a hydrogen bomb, still likely pushes Pyongyang closer to its goal of a nuclear-armed missile that can reach the U.S. mainland. Many outside governments and experts question whether the blast was in fact a powerful hydrogen test.

In the wake of the test on Wednesday, the two Koreas have settled into the kind of Cold War-era standoff that has defined their relationship over the past seven decades. Since Friday, South Korea has been blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda from huge speakers along the border, and the North is using speakers of its own to send messages, although Seoul says they are too weak to be heard clearly on the South Korean side.