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South Korea gears up for more North Korean ballistic missile tests

South Korea carried out a simulated attack on North Korea’s nuclear missile site Monday, just one day after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a thermonuclear warhead – a development that puts North Korea in the exclusive “nuclear club.”

The country is also pushing ahead with the deployment of a controversial missile defense system, amid fears that North Korea is preparing to conduct another intercontinental ballistic missile test — which could happen as soon as next Saturday.

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Seoul announced Monday that it was planning to push ahead with the deployment of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in collaboration with the U.S. military. Following the completion of an environmental report, lawmakers said that they will temporarily deploy four remaining launchers at a site near the South Korean capital.

Both Russia and China have loudly voiced their opposition to the system, which they believe will enable the U.S. to spy on them.

The decision to deploy THAAD was made in the wake of rising tensions on the peninsula, after North Korea claimed to have successfully tested a nuclear warhead which can be strapped to one of its ballistic missiles – and Pyongyang doesn’t appear to be slowing down its rapid-fire missile testing plans.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told South Korean lawmakers Monday that it has observed indications that North Korea is planning to fire another ICBM on a standard trajectory toward the North Pacific, and it could be timed to coincide with the anniversary of the regime’s foundation on September 9.

The intelligence officials said it could also take place next month, on October 10, to coincide with the anniversary of the establishment of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

Chang Kyung-soo, a defense ministry official, told the South Korean parliament: “We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile.”

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On Sunday, North Korea announced that it had “successfully carried out a test of H-bomb for ICBM,” a move which violated UN sanctions and brought widespread condemnation. In response, South Korea said it conducted a live-fire test as a show of strength, with the exercises involving the launch of ballistic missiles in a simulated strike against North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site — where Sunday’s test was carried out.

North Korea’s underground nuclear test — its sixth in total — caused tremors throughout South Korea and China. President Trump labeled the move “hostile and dangerous to the United States,” while Defense Secretary James Mattis warned that any threat will be met with “a massive military response — a response both effective and overwhelming.”

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also weighed in, saying the Korean peninsula was closer to war now than at any time in the last 60 years.

The US Geological Survey said it recorded a 6.3-magnitude earthquake Sunday, while the seismological observatory NORSAR estimated the explosive yield at 120 kilotons of TNT — approximately eight times the yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Vipin Narang, a nuclear expert at MIT, labeled the bomb a “city buster,” adding that even a “relatively inaccurate intercontinental ballistic missile technology, [North Korea] can destroy the better part of a city with this yield.”

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Ahead of the launch, North Korea’s state media released pictures of Kim Jong Un inspecting the warhead, consistent with the country’s claim that it was a “two-stage” device. However, analysts at 38 North, a website dedicated to informed analysis of North Korea, warned that drawing assumptions based on these pictures alone was not a good idea.

“Caution should be taken as this is the conclusion that North Korea wants the U.S. and others to reach from viewing the images and it is likely that an actual device will have a somewhat different design and that this was only a model mock-up,” the experts said.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has been focused on developing ballistic missile technology capable of reaching the continental United States while carrying a nuclear warhead. It’s unclear whether Pyongyang has achieved this goal however, as there’s no way of knowing if the warhead would survive the stresses placed on it during reentry.

Either way, leaders around the world now have to accept that North Korea is now a member of a very exclusive club.

“The international community now finds itself in a new normal — in which North Korea is the newest member of the nuclear club,” Jasper Kim, director of the Center for Conflict Management at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, told VICE News. “The issue now is how the other nuclear club members will treat its newest entrant. Some will view it as an inevitable fact that cannot be reversed. Others will try to push and prod North Korea into reversing course on its nuclear ambitions.”

An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council will be held later Monday to discuss its response to the latest provocation by North Korea.