President Park Geun-hye on Thursday warned North Korea against carrying out another nuclear test that she said would eradicate the future of the reclusive regime. Presiding over the National Security Council, Park also ordered a regular meeting against the North’s provocation threats while she is away on a visit to Iran from this weekend.

“If the Kim Jong-un regime goes ahead with an additional nuclear test despite the international community’s warning, there will no longer be a future for them,” Park said.

“It will be taking place under the strongest-ever U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed upon the fourth test. This is an explicit full-frontal challenge and provocation against the international society. ... We will be facing a situation that is totally different in its gravity.”

Park ordered the members to hold regular NSC meetings during her May 1-3 visit to Iran in preparation against the North’s possible nuclear test that will lead to “extreme unease.”

The meeting, the third one to be attended by Park this year, opened amid signs of Pyongyang preparing to conduct its fifth nuclear test in time for its Workers’ Party congress slated for May 6. There have been reports of increased activities near its nuclear test site northeastern Punggye-ri.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order on March 15 to execute at an early date the detonation test of a nuclear warhead and launch tests of ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.

South Korea’s intelligence agency told the National Assembly on Wednesday that they believed the North has completed preparation for an additional test and is awaiting Kim’s final order. Observers view that Kim may be aiming to show off the North’s nuclear weapons capacity in time for the congress and show off its determination to nuclearize.

Making for the latest provocation, the North on Thursday test-fired what appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, South Korean military officials said. They said the launch of what may seem to be the same Mudusan model that the North fired off on April 15, seems to have failed by crashing several seconds later.

The North has been test-firing short-range intermediate missiles in the past months following the U.N. Security Council’s heavy sanctions against its Jan. 6 nuclear test and Feb. 7 long-range rocket launch. The reclusive regime has also repeatedly lodged threats to strike against the South and its allies.

Park had convened the NSC both upon the January nuclear test and February long-range missile launch.

“North Korea, which has been consistently raising tension, has been reported to be preparing for an artillery drill using a model of Cheong Wa Dae in the outskirts of Pyongyang,” Park said earlier in the day during the Cabinet meeting.

“If the North conducts an additional nuclear test, it will not be tolerated, as (it would be) an extremely serious act of provocation that rattles the security order of Northeast Asia.”

On the same day, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Beijing would not tolerate any war or confusion on the Korean Peninsula, underscoring his country’s commitment to implementing sanctions against the North, but also calling for dialogue.

“China will fully implement the U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Xi said in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)