North Korea conducted yet another ballistic missile test early Friday morning, only days after the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to place new sanctions on the reclusive state as a result of the Kim regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems.

This latest lunch comes after a new slew of North Korean threats targeted the United States and allied Japan, claiming that North Korea would “sink” Japan and reduce the United States to “ash and darkness.”

Friday’s launch, which appears to have been an intermediate or long-range ballistic missile, reportedly flew over Japan, before touching down in the ocean about 1,240 miles off of the Japanese cape of Erimo in Hokkaido.  South Korea’s Blue House (comparable to America’s White House) is said to have called an urgent National Security Council meeting immediately following news of the launch.

The UN opted to establish the strictest sanctions to date on North Korea following their sixth, and largest, nuclear test to date.  On September 3^rd, Kim Jong un’s North Korean regime detonated what is believed to have been a two-stage thermonuclear device, commonly referred to as a hydrogen bomb, in their underground Punggye-ri testing facility.  Because the test was conducted underground, South Korean and American defense experts were left to extrapolate based on the seismic activity and the slow release of radiation detected in the region to establish that North Korea’s claims of possessing a hydrogen bomb seem to be true.

Unlike North Korea’s previous nuclear weapons, which were comparable in power to the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the United States near the end of World War II, hydrogen bombs utilize compounding nuclear explosions to create a far larger yield than a traditional atomic weapon is capable of.  It is currently estimated that North Korea’s most recent test demonstrated an explosive capacity nearing 10 times the yield of any weapon believed to have been in Kim’s arsenal previously.

Following that test, the United States championed a new resolution that aimed to restrict North Korea’s valuable textile exports, while also limiting fuel imports to the nation, in hopes that a tighter grip on North Korea’s economy will eventually force Kim Jong un to relinquish his nuclear pursuits.

Today, we are saying the world will never accept a nuclear armed North Korea, and today the Security Council is saying that if the North Korean regime does not halt its nuclear program, we will act to stop it ourselves,” U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said after the vote Monday.  “We are done trying to prod the regime to do the right thing, we are now trying to stop it from having the ability to do the wrong thing,” she added.

North Korea responded in its usual fashion, with threats, with Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, stating plainly that “The forthcoming measures by DPRK will make the U.S. suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history.”

Image courtesy of North Korea’s KCNA