North Korea Readies Nukes, Following Tough U.N. Sanctions Vote

The rocket launches were personally monitored by Kim Jong- Un who, according to state media, also ordered North Korea's nuclear warheads to be deployed "on standby so as to be fired at any moment".

The North Korean projectiles, fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, flew about 100 to 150 km (60 to 90 miles) before landing in the sea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The full extent of the isolated country's nuclear capabilities is unknown, but some experts doubt whether North Korea has the power to mount its nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles for action as Kim described.

In the wake of the "gangster-like" UN resolution pushed by the United States and its South Korean ally, North Koreans are now "waiting for an order of combat to annihilate the enemy with their surging wrath", he added.

The EU established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001 but contacts are minimal.

"Now is the time for us to convert our mode of military counteraction toward the enemies into a pre-emptive attack one in every aspect".

Park has been tough in her response to the North's recent actions, moving from her earlier self-described "trustpolitik" approach, and on Thursday welcomed the move by the Security Council and repeated her call for the North to change its behaviour.

Supreme Court pulls up BCCI over reluctance to accept Lodha panel's recommendations
Venugopal also listed some of the recomendations of the panel with which the Board does not agree and sought that it be allowed to go back to the Lodha Committee for sorting out the issues.

The US-drafted United Nations resolution adopted by the Security Council laid out the toughest sanctions imposed on Pyongyang to date over its nuclear weapons program that will, if implemented effectively, apply significant economic pressure to Kim's regime.

While the US maintains that any deployment of THAAD in South Korea would be exclusively to protect its forces there and their South Korean allies, some see it as further militarization of the peninsula and an escalation of the American presence there. As one US official told CNN's Barbara Starr, the regime has tested nuclear devices that it says have been miniaturized. The satellite launch followed a fourth nuclear test and caused a deepening political crisis with South Korea and led to fresh sanctions.

Later on Friday, North Korea rejected the Security Council resolution as a "criminal act" masterminded by the United States and vowed to continue boosting its nuclear deterrent and move forward on the path to become a "satellite superpower".

Kim's comments came amid heightened inter-Korea tensions, after the North conducted a nuclear test on January 6 and a rocket launch on Feb.7. But the North has refused to give up its nukes, made them a central part of its military and diplomatic strategies and enshrined its right to have them in its constitution.

Unlike the South's democratic system, North Korea has remained under the dictatorial rule of the Kim family dynasty since the state's foundation in the late 1940s.

"No kind of sanctions will ever work on us, because we've lived under USA sanctions for more than half a century", Pyongyang resident Song Hyo-il said, as cited by AP.