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S.Korean president urges efforts at additional sanctions on DPRK

Xinhua, March 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday instructed senior presidential secretaries to make efforts at further sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and closely cooperate to enforce new UN Security Council resolution.

Park told a meeting with senior presidential advisers that the UN Security Council unanimously adopted an unprecedentedly strong and comprehensive resolution on the DPRK on March 3, urging them to closely cooperate with UN member states to completely enforce the UN resolution and makes efforts at further bilateral and multilateral sanctions toward Pyongyang.

Her comments came amid growing local media reports that South Korea will unveil its further unilateral sanctions over the DPRK's latest nuclear test and long-range rocket launch after the shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Zone last month.

According to Yonhap news agency, the South Korean government plans to unveil new standalone sanctions against Pyongyang on Tuesday, including a ban on third-country vessels having docked at the DPRK from accessing South Korean ports.

Three days after the DPRK's launch on Feb. 7 of a rocket, which outsiders see as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology, Seoul closed down the inter-Korean factory park in the DPRK's border city of Kaesong as part of punitive measures.

The DPRK started off a new year with the test of what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6, the fourth of its nuclear detonations.

Park said that the new UN resolution was a message of the international community hoping for peace on the Korean peninsula and in the world, expressing gratitude for all efforts by the international society and UN Security Council members to draw up the resolution.

The president noted that what's important now is to completely enforce the new resolution to create an environment in which Pyongyang abandons nuclear development and come to a path for change.

She urged officials to thoroughly prepare for any possible provocations from the DPRK as the DPRK's National Defense Commission had warned of "pre-emptive and aggressive nuclear strikes" against South Korea and the U.S. mainland in response to the joint U.S.-South Korea annual war games that kicked off on Monday.

The spring war games, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, will run through April 30, mobilizing the largest-ever forces from Seoul and Washington. Endit