Seoul – Leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered North Korea’s nuclear arsenal readied for pre-emptive use at anytime, in an expected ramping up of rhetoric following the UN Security Council’s adoption of tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.

The North’s nuclear warheads must be deployed “on standby so as to be fired at any moment,” Kim was quoted as saying by the North’s official KCNA news agency on Friday.

He also warned that the situation on the divided Korean peninsula had become so dangerous that the North needed to shift its military strategy to one of “pre-emptive attack”.

Such bellicose rhetoric is almost routine for North Korea at times of elevated tensions.

While the North is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear warheads, experts are divided about its ability to mount them on a working missile delivery system.

Washington downplayed Kim’s threat as posturing.

“We have not seen North Korea test or demonstrate the ability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and put it on an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile),” a US defence official told AFP.

Still, the official added, “our forces are ready to counter-eliminate strikes if necessary.” According to KCNA, Kim made his comments while monitoring the test firing of a new, high-calibre multiple rocket launcher on Thursday, just hours after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted the US-drafted resolution penalising the North for its fourth nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch last month.

South Korea’s defence ministry said the North had fired half a dozen rockets about 100-150 kilometres into the sea off its eastern coast on Thursday.

In a clear threat to neighbouring South Korea, Kim said the new rocket launcher should be “promptly deployed” along with other “recently-developed” weaponry.

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 Security Council resolution adopted late Wednesday laid out the toughest sanctions imposed on Pyongyang to date over its nuclear weapons programme and will, if implemented effectively, apply significant economic pressure to Kim’s regime.

It breaks new ground by sanctioning specific sectors key to the North Korean economy – such as mineral exports – and seeking to undermine the North’s use of and access to international transport systems.

Kim said the resolution had opened a “very dangerous phase”, coming just days before the US and South Korea kick off annual joint military drills that Pyongyang views as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

The exercises involving tens of thousands of troops are scheduled to begin next Monday.

Tensions are likely to be further fuelled with the opening later Friday of formal talks between Seoul and Washington on the possible deployment of an advanced US missile defence system in South Korea.

The THAAD system fires anti-ballistic missiles to smash into enemy missiles either inside or outside the Earth’s atmosphere during their final flight phase.

The allies announced their intention to begin talks on its deployment following Pyongyang’s long-range rocket launch on February 7, which was seen by the US and its allies as a covert ballistic missile test.

The move is strongly opposed by China and Russia, with Beijing saying it would undermine its own nuclear deterrent and has the potential to “destroy” relations with Seoul.

Wednesday’s Security Council resolution ushered in the fifth set of UN sanctions to hit North Korea since it first tested an atomic device in 2006, and was the result of arduous negotiations between the US and China, Pyongyang’s sole major ally.

China had been reluctant to endorse harsh sanctions out of concern that too much pressure would trigger the collapse of the pariah regime, creating chaos on its border.

The sanctions Beijing finally signed off on are extremely tough on paper, but experts have warned that some of the language is vague enough to allow varying levels of enforcement.

Japan – Takayuki Ueno did not hesitate one moment to expose himself to high radiation five years ago while searching for family members swept away by the tsunami that triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The bodies of his mother and daughter Erika were found. But Ueno braves radiation and bitter cold on beaches near the crippled plant to look for the remains of his father and son Kotaro, then three years old, to bring closure to his loss. “My highest duty as a parent was to protect my children, which I failed to fulfil. That makes me the worst parent, and I have to apologise to them,” Ueno, 43, told Reuters. “I was able to hold Erika in my arms and say ‘I am sorry’. I have yet to be able to do the same to Kotaro,” said Ueno, who lives 22 km north of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

A magnitude 9 earthquake and towering tsunami on March 11, 2011 killed nearly 16,000 people along Japan’s northeastern coast and left more than 2,500 missing.

The nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has made the experience of those who lived nearby particularly traumatic.

Norio Kimura, who lived 3 km south of the plant, had to choose between staying behind to search for his father, wife and younger daughter Yuna, or taking his mother and elder daughter away from spreading radiation. “I was torn by having to abandon my search and leave them behind… By the time I came back, the situation had become quite grim when it comes to finding them alive,” Kimura, 50, said.

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AFP, Reuters

HIGH RADIATION

The accident still hampers Kimura’s effort to find Yuna, the last family member missing, as entry into half of his hometown, Okuma, is restricted due to high radiation levels.

On a recent weekend, Kimura and a dozen volunteers led by Ueno, combed through piles of debris on a windswept Okuma beach for any signs of Yuna. They are allowed to enter the area up to 30 times a year and stay for up to five hours per visit.

As they dug through heaps of dirt mixed with driftwood, blocks of concrete, utility poles, crooked iron pipes and clothes of all sizes and colours, a dosimetre emitted high-pitched beeps. At one point, it showed six microsieverts per hour, 100 times as high as radiation levels in downtown Tokyo.

That does not shake Kimura’s resolve. “I’ll keep on searching until I find her,” Kimura said, adding that even then he might keep looking for other missing victims.

Such tenacity can be partly explained by views of life and death widely held in Asia, experts say. “Once dead, a body itself is often seen and treated as an object in the West,” said Shinichi Niwa, adjunct professor of psychiatry at Fukushima Medical University’s Aizu Medical Center. “In Asia, there is a strong belief that one’s spirit stays with the body and they are not separated,” he said.

Famous sakura trees bloom in abandoned Fukushima town

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After 10 years as a necessary, but ultimately unwelcome, live-in son-in-law, Ma Xuedong divorced, and moved out of his wife’s family home. The end of his unhappy marriage pleased the 37-year-old migrant construction worker, even though he had to scramble to find a place to live in Baoji, Shaanxi province.

“My previous life was too depressing,” Ma said. “It’s a feeling you will never be able to understand if you have not experienced it.”

Ma speaks for many of China’s so-called live-in sons-in-law, who marry and move in with their wives’ families, but never quite became an integral part of the family.

Their numbers are legion, a result of China’s decades-old gender imbalance, a historic preference for male offspring, enduring marriage customs and the desire of families to preserve a surname in danger of dying out in a household in which all of the children are girls.

In a traditional view of marriage in China, a woman marries a man and lives with his family, or the couple lives in their own house, bought by the husband’s family, and their children take the husband’s surname.

This custom has been upended in two ways. First, China’s gender imbalance means many men, especially in rural areas, have trouble finding wives. By the end of 2015, on the Chinese mainland, men outnumbered women by 33.66 million, making it challenging for China’s left-over men to find a partner.

Second, a poor man who cannot pay an expected “bride price” may look for a family that will pick up the cost. These men may marry a woman with no brothers, move into the woman’s family home and allow their children to carry their mother’s surname.

Even though the arrangement meets the needs of all involved, families and communities still look down on those who have no sons and opt for live-in sons-in-law to fill the void. In many cases, the resentment creates unhappiness.

Ma said he felt free after he signed his divorce agreement, although he left without any property. “They still considered me a poor guy from a remote mountain area,” Ma said.

Ma was born in Mabaozi village in Baoji, where many young men face a future as a live-in son-in-law because it is the only way for them to marry. Nearly 80 per cent of the adult men in the village became live-in sons-in-law because no women want to move to a poor, backward village, said Li Zhijun, director of Mabaozi’s villagers’ committee.

“In recent years, the bride price, money paid by bridegroom’s family to the bride’s family, increased to about 100,000 yuan (S$21,229) from 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, but no women wanted to marry into our poverty-stricken village,” Li said.

Two tragedies have highlighted the challenges live-in sons-in-law face. Earlier this year, a live-in son-in-law, surnamed Meng, in Weinan, Shaanxi province, killed his wife. He reportedly had been depressed with his circumstances since he married in 2013. Two years ago, on Nov 22, 2013, a live-in son-in-law in Huaiyang county, Henan province, killed seven members of his wife’s family, including his wife and 10-year-old son.

The unhappiness is not universal. Many live-in sons-in-law live happy, hardworking lives with good communication and affection from their wives and extended families.

Lyu Xiaoping, 36, who works in the security department of a company in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province, also hails from Mabaozi. He married his wife, surnamed Yang, in 2008 and agreed to let their child carry his wife’s surname.

“My wife and I love each other very much and she takes my feelings into account as she gave our child the name Yang Lyujiang, which includes my surname,” Lyu said.

Zhang Baotong, a social and economic development expert with the Shaanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said live-in sons-in-law should learn to get along with their wives’ families and people in their communities.

Additionally, Zhang said, the genders are equal in modern society, and couples can choose their marriage styles with their own conditions.

“With the development of urbanization, more and more poor farmers will work and live in urban areas and some of them may become live-in sons-in-law as they cannot pay for houses and the other costs of marriage,” Zhang said.

“And our marriage concept should change with the development of the times to give full respect to the sons-in-law.”