North Korea: new threats to sink japan and turn US to 'ashes and darkness'

North Korea has threatened to sink Japan and said that the US should be “beaten to death like a rabid dog”. This came following the issuing of fresh UN security council sanctions, in response to Pyongyang’s recent nuclear test.

The Korea Asia-Pacific peace committee, whose job it is to oversee North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world, described the UN security council as a “tool of evil” and called for it to be broken up.

This is the first time Pyongyang has issued an explicit threat to Japan, since it fired a medium-range ballistic missile over the Japanese island of Hokkaido at the end of August, which triggered emergency sirens and mass text alerts.

“The four islands of the [Japanese] archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche”, the committee said, in a statement carried by official KCNA news agency. ‘Juche’ is the ideology pioneered by Kim Il-sung, the state’s founder and grandfather of Kim Jong-un.

“Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the committee added.

The security council, comprised of 15 people, voted unanimously in support of a US-drafted resolution, which condemned the missile test and imposed measures, which include a ban on North Korean textile imports and placed restrictions on oil exports to the state.

The committee said the US should be “beaten to death like a rabid dog”, for the “heinous sanctions resolution”.

“Let’s reduce the US mainland into ashes and darkness. Let’s vent our spite with mobilisation of all retaliation means which have been prepared till now,” it said.

Top government spokesman of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, described the statement as “extremely provocative and egregious” and went on to say: “it is something that markedly heightens regional tension and is absolutely unacceptable”.

A new report has claimed that the detonation on 3 September of what North Korea claimed was a hydrogen bomb involved a device with an estimated yield of 250 kilotons – making it far more powerful than initially thought.

A new report by US-based 38 North website claimed that the detonation on September 3, of what North Korea claimed was a hydrogen bomb, involved a device with an estimated yield of 250 kilotons, making it far more powerful than was initially thought.

“Regardless of whether this most recent test was an operational warhead for an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] or simply a device, the yield of the test clearly shows North Korean progress in increasing the yields of their nuclear weapons,” it said.

In a gesture apparently aimed at lowering the diplomatic temperature, South Korea’s government is considering an $8m aid package for North Korea.

Seoul suspended aid to North Korea, provided via UN agencies, after the regime conducted nuclear and missile tests in 2016. But under a proposal that could be approved next week, the South would provide $4.5m to a World Food Programme project to help infants and pregnant women, and $3.5m to Unicef, according to Yonhap news agency.

“The government’s basic stance is that humanitarian assistance to those who are vulnerable in North Korea should be continued regardless of political considerations,” Yonhap quoted a unification ministry official in Seoul.