By Morgan Steinbach — After North Korea has successfully launched a “three stage rocket that put a satellite into space, the country has proved that they are capable of sending a long range missile towards North America.

It has been reported that the communist nation has control of between six and twelve nuclear weapons. Though the weapons are not nearly to the extremity of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, they are capable of doing damage to the United States.

Internationally, there has been much concern about North Korea aggressing toward the United States. In the past, the United Nations has had to sanction North Korea in order to “deteriorate and disrupt the networks that sustain North Korea’s (nuclear) programs”, according to CNN.

The resolution presented by the UN to help limit the advances of North Korea includes, ship interdictions, cargo inspections and the searching and disposal of specific materials not allowed in the nation. The banned materials are ones that might help in making nuclear missiles including.

Other sanctions that have been put into place are financial boundaries. The UN has targeted two banks in Japan that are directly connected to North Korea by providing them with machinery equipment that supports the nuclear weapons.

Though North Korea has directly challenged the sanctions placed by the UN, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetts said to CNN News, “as a nation, we are concerned about North Korea’s behavior but we are ‘fully prepared’ to deal with a possible attack”.

[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]