Via a reader tip comes news that North Korea flew a drone across the DMZ that the ROK military took shots at:

South Korea on Wednesday fired 20 machine gun warning shots after a North Korean drone briefly crossed the rivals’ border, officials said, the first shots fired in a Cold War-style standoff between the Koreas in the wake of the North’s nuclear test last week.

The North Korean drone was flying dozens of meters (yards) south of the border and turned back to the North after the South fired the shots, South Korean defense and military officials said, requesting anonymity because of office rules. The shots did not hit the drone.

North Korean drone flights across the world’s most heavily armed border are rare, but have happened before.

North Korea has in recent years touted its drone program, a relatively new addition to its arsenal. In 2013, state media said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had watched a drone attack drill on a simulated South Korean target.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

More threats from North Korea being made against the US:

North Korea said Tuesday that it is ready to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of wiping out the United States “all at once,” claiming that it has succeeded in developing miniaturized nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s latest nuclear test helped the North “get fully armed with smaller and standardized H-bombs for ballistic rockets and get possessed of ultra-modern strike means for delivering nuclear bombs of various kinds,” the Korean Central News Agency said in its commentary.

The North threatened that its nuclear scientists and technicians are “in high spirits” to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of “wiping out” the whole U.S. territory all at once as Washington moves to stifle the North. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It is important to remember that just because the test failed doesn’t mean the North Koreans did not learn something from it to improve the bomb for a second test:

The yield, or the total energy produced by the bomb, also contradicts Pyongyang’s claim.

It is estimated that the Wednesday test generated 6 kilotons of yield, which is less than the 8-kiloton yield of the third nuclear test in 2013.

The North’s second nuclear test in 2009 had 2-kiloton yield, and the first in 2006 yielded less than 1 kiloton of total energy. A yield of 1 kiloton can be approximately compared to 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.

In an H-bomb test by the Soviet Union in 1961, the yield produced by the destructive bomb known as “Czar Bomb” was estimated at 50,000 kilotons.

One government official involved in the assessment of the test last week told the JoongAng Ilbo that the government thinks Pyongyang carried out a failed hydrogen test after reviewing various scientific data and evidence. “We have reviewed a wide range of scientific data such as the strength of the seismic event and sound wave and the detonation location before coming up with the assessment [that it was a failed H-bomb test],” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

11-Year-Old Figure Skater Becomes Youngest-Ever National Champion https://t.co/JA8TcD4bbJ

— The Chosun Daily (@EnglishChosun) January 11, 2016

North Korea launches fireworks in Pyongyang on Jan. 8, 2015 to celebrate its H-bomb test conducted on Jan. 6. (Yonhap)

A box of remains returned to US investigators back in 1994 has been identified through DNA analysis as Private First Class David S. Burke and is set to be buried this week with full military honors:

The remains of a soldier declared missing in action 65 years ago during the Korean War will be buried this week with full military honors.

Pfc. David S. Burke, 18, of Akron, Ohio, will be laid to rest Friday in Rittman, Ohio, according to a statement by the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

On Nov. 25, 1950, Burke was among 136 soldiers and four officers taken prisoner from Company C, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, after an attack near the China-North Korea border. The unit, which suffered heavy casualties and was surrounded by Chinese troops, was forced to surrender, the statement said. Burke was declared missing in action after the battle.

Prisoners of war who returned to America in September 1953 reported that Burke had died of malnutrition between March and May 1951, and his status was amended to deceased.  [Stars & Stripes]

You  can read more at the link.

If he some how gets elected it will be interesting to see if Trump is able to back up his big talk because getting China to do something on North Korea is not as easy as he makes it sound:

Calling North Korea a “disgrace,” Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Sunday that China should solve the problem as Pyongyang’s main benefactor or be forced to see its trade with the United States suffer.

It was the latest in a series of remarks that Trump has been making since the North’s nuclear test last week to underscore his point that China has “total control” over Pyongyang, and the U.S. should force Beijing to fix the problem of the North.

“I think North Korea is a disgrace,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I would get China, and I would say, ‘Get in there and straighten it out. You’d better straighten it out.’ And, if you don’t straighten it out, we’re going to have trouble because we have power over China. We have trade power over China.”

Trump also said that while Iran is expected to have nuclear weapons due to what he calls a “stupid agreement” that the U.S. and other world powers concluded with Tehran last year, North Korea already has “very dangerous weapons of some sort.”

In another FOX TV interview, Trump again said that China is the one that should fix the North Korea problem.

“People ask me a number of questions. They were asking me how do you solve North Korea? Well, China should be solving North Korea; they have total power,” Trump said.   [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

North Korea Activates Loudspeakers to Cope with S. Korean Psy-Ops https://t.co/o74MgVZGaS

— KBS WORLD Radio (@KBSWorldRadio) January 11, 2016

A South Korean citizen offers a flower to the statue of a girl who symbolizes the hundreds of thousands of Korean women who were mobilized as sex slaves for Japan’s World War II soldiers, in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Jan. 9, 2016. (Yonhap)

The North Korean’s are believed to have doctored a video of their SLBM test to make people think they have greater capability than they really have.  Watch the video below and judge for yourself.  The reason the North Koreans really want people to believe they are developing an SLBM capability is because it then complicates missile defenses.  It is hard to preposition radars and launchers to protect assets when the missile can come from any direction from the sea instead of prepositioned locations within North Korea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPzTP3wiIyM

South Korea’s military said Saturday the latest video of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test released by the North earlier this week may have been manipulated.

“It is believed that North Korea’s SLBM ejection test video has been edited with images from a Scud missile ejection film made in the past,” a military official said, adding that the intention was to make the test seem successful.

“In May last year, the North’s SLBM video showed a launch angle of 74 degrees. As the latest video showed an angle of 90 degrees, it is possible that North Korea’s technology has improved to some extent,” the official added. North Korea also claimed then it had successfully carried out an underwater SLBM test.

A new documentary aired by the state-run (North) Korean Central Broadcasting Station on Friday featured leader Kim Jong-un giving field guidance during an SLBM ejection test the country is reported to have conducted on Dec. 21 in the East Sea.

In the video, a missile shoots off from a submarine at almost a completely vertical angle and ignites with a boom some 40 meters above the surface of the water before disappearing into the clouds.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.