South Korea will allow the installation of four anti-ballistic missile launchers today at a US base operating in the country, as military safeguards are boosted in the wake of North Korea’s most powerful nuclear test to date. 
US Forces Korea will position the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) launchers at a base in Seongju, about 300km south of Seoul, the Yonhap news agency reported yesterday, citing South Korea’s Defence Ministry.
They will be in addition to THAAD launchers that have been installed in South Korea since March, to the objection of China and North Korea. The move comes days after Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date, on Sunday.
It was estimated to have been approximately eight times more powerful than the nuclear bomb detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945.
The detonation followed a series of increasingly ambitious ballistic missile tests by Pyongyang in recent weeks. The test pushed already high tensions on the Korean Peninsula and across the region to a fever pitch. 
A new UN resolution drafted by the US after an emergency Security Council meeting is being circulated this week. The US is calling for the strongest possible sanctions against North Korea. 
The proposal is expected to come to a vote by the 15-member council on Monday.
China, an ally of the regime in North Korea, said it opposed South Korea’s deployment of the THAAD missile defence system. The deployment “would not solve security concerns” and would “seriously undermine the strategic balance of the region,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a daily briefing. Geng called for South Korea and the United States to “immediately stop the deployment process” and remove the equipment or risk exacerbating tensions on the peninsula.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated yesterday that the North Korean nuclear stand-off could not be solved by sanctions and called for dialogue, even as he acknowledged that North Korea’s nuclear programme violates UN Security Council resolutions and said Russia does not recognize a nuclear North Korea.
“I confirmed to (South Korean President) Mr Moon Jae in our principled position: We are not recognising the nuclear status of North Korea,” TASS quoted Putin as saying, without providing clarification.
Putin had previously said he was opposed to the new UN sanctions package against Pyongyang currently under consideration.
“It is clear that it is impossible to solve the Korean Peninsula’s problems by only sanctions and pressure,” Putin said yesterday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, according to TASS state news agency. “We should not succumb to emotions and drive North Korea into a corner,” Putin reportedly said following his talks with Moon.
One form of sanction pushed by the West would see China cut oil exports to North Korea.
But Kremlin consultant Yuri Ushakov said such a move would not have the desired effect.
“What we want would not be achieved with that,” he told Interfax, pointing out that the North Korean government would allow the situation to deteriorate to a point where its people were forced to eat grass before it scaled back its ambitions.
China and Russia are the closest allies of the isolated regime in Pyongyang. At the UN Security Council on Monday, envoys for the two powers called for the US to resume negotiations and rejected calls for harsher sanctions.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed late Tuesday to seek a stronger UN sanctions resolution against North Korea in the wake of its nuclear test over the weekend, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.


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