Author Topic: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful  (Read 4071 times)

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Amianthus

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North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« on: October 09, 2006, 08:32:54 AM »
Oct 9, 6:50 AM (ET)

By BURT HERMAN

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea faced a barrage of condemnation and calls for retaliation Monday after it announced that it had set off a small atomic weapon underground, a test that thrust the secretive communist state into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations.

The United States, Japan, China and Britain led a chorus of criticism and urged action by the United Nations Security Council in response to the reported test, which fell one day after the anniversary of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's accession to power nine years ago.

The Security Council had warned North Korea just two days earlier not to go through with any test, and the Pyongyang government's defiance was likely to lead to calls for stronger sanctions against the impoverished and already isolated country.

White House spokesman Tony Snow called for "immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act" and said that the United States was closely monitoring the situation and "reaffirms its commitment to protect and defend our allies in the region."

South Korea's geological institute estimated that the test's power was equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, far smaller than the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a magnitude-4.2 seismic event in northeastern North Korea. Asian neighbors also said they registered a seismic event, but only Russia said its monitoring services had detected a nuclear explosion.

"It is 100 percent (certain) that it was an underground nuclear explosion," said Lt. Gen. Vladimir Verkhovtsev, head of a Defense Ministry department, according to Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency.

Although North Korea has long claimed it had the capability to produce a bomb, the test was the first manifest proof of its membership in a small club of nuclear-armed nations. A nuclear armed North Korea would dramatically alter the strategic balance of power in the Pacific region and would tend to undermine already fraying global anti-proliferation efforts.

"If the test (is) true, it will severely endanger not only Northeast Asia but also the world stability," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso warned.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, facing his first major foreign policy test since his recent election, called for a "calm yet stern response."

South Korea said it had put its military on high alert, but said it noticed no unusual activity among North Korea's troops.

China, the North's closest ally and the impoverished nation's main source of food, expressed its "resolute opposition" to the reported test and urged the North to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks. It said the North "defied the universal opposition of international society and flagrantly conducted the nuclear test."

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said the test was a "completely irresponsible act," and its Foreign Ministry warned of international repercussions.

The White House said a test defied world opinion.

"A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in Northeast Asia," Snow said.

Russia, which borders North Korea, had urged Pyongyang not to conduct a nuclear test. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov last week voiced concern about the environmental consequences for Russia. The Foreign Ministry warned that a test would add to regional tensions and undermine the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The North has refused for a year to attend six-party international talks aimed at persuading it to disarm. The country pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 after U.S. officials accused it of a secret nuclear program, allegedly violating an earlier nuclear pact between Washington and Pyongyang.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully and there was no dangerous radioactive leakage as a result.

North Korean scientists "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions," the government-controlled agency said, adding this was "a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation."

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the ... people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

South Korea said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city on the northeast coast. South Korean intelligence officials said the seismic wave had been detected in North Hamkyung province, the agency said.

No increase in radiation levels was detected in Russia's Primorye territory, which borders North Korea, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted regional meteorological service spokesman Sergei Slobodchikov as saying. Vladivostok, a large port city on Russia's Pacific Coast, is about 60 miles from the short border with North Korea.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun convened a meeting of security advisers over the test, Yonhap reported. The Japanese government set up a task force in response, Kyodo news agency said.

A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in July after a series of North Korean missile launches imposed limited sanctions on North Korea and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program - a demand the North immediately rejected.

The resolution bans all U.N. member states from selling material or technology for missiles or weapons of mass destruction to North Korea - and it bans all countries from receiving missiles, banned weapons or technology from Pyongyang.

Speculation over a possible North Korean test arose earlier this year after U.S. and Japanese reports cited suspicious activity at a suspected underground test site.

South Korean stocks plunged Monday following North Korea's announcement of the test. The South Korean won also fell sharply. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or Kospi, fell as low as 1,303.62, or 3.6 percent.

Markets in South Korea, the world's 10th largest economy, have long been considered vulnerable to potential geopolitical risks emanating from the North. The two countries, which fought the 1950-53 Korean War, are divided by the world's most heavily armed border.

The two Koreas, which fought a 1950-53 war that ended in a cease-fire that has yet to be replaced with peace treaty, are divided by the world's most heavily armed border. However, they have made unprecedented strides toward reconciliation since their leaders met at their first-and-only summit in 2000.

The South had planned to ship 4,000 tons of cement to the North on Tuesday as emergency relief following massive flooding there, but decided to delay it, Yonhap reported, quoting an unidentified Unification Ministry official.

South Korea had said the one-time aid shipment was separate from its regular humanitarian aid to the North, which it has halted after Pyongyang's missile launches in July.

Impoverished and isolated North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people since its state-run farming system collapsed in the 1990s following decades of mismanagement and the loss of Soviet subsidies.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20061009/D8KL2J880.html
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Lanya

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2006, 12:17:35 PM »

We knew this was a possibility.  Then why on earth did Bush do this:

"In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia-pacific/1908571.stm
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Michael Tee

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2006, 12:40:52 PM »
Didn't they want to discuss the whole thing with American negotiators one-on-one?  Wasn't it the Bush administration that turned down the one-one talks they had asked for?  (just askin)

Michael Tee

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2006, 02:38:50 PM »
<<The White House said a test defied world opinion.>>

Absolutely hilarious.  Priceless.

And they say Republicans have no sense of humour.

larry

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2006, 09:55:27 PM »
This more than anything show that (WMD) was not the reason for the Bush Administration attack on Iraq. Bush attack Iraq because he knew Saddam did not have the meaqns to defend the country. Now we have North Korea and Iran telling the big bad George W. Bush, bring it on and Bush has painted himself into a corner. What a friggen mess.

BT

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2006, 10:14:17 PM »
Quote
What a friggen mess.

How do you figure?

This is an example of the slow process needed when multilateral discussions are called for.

Fact is N.Korea knows that if they use those nukes, if in fact they do exist, they as a country will cease to exist.

Plane

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2006, 01:51:58 AM »
Could this have been faked?

The individual equivilient of North Korea would be a kid with a pistol waveing it in peoples faces screaming "Respect Me!"


The blast being rather small by Atomic standards it becomes a possibility that they did not risk another humiliateing tecnical failure , but actually piled up a megaton of real TNT. Setting a big enough conventional explosive could have spared the face of the North Korean leadership from the uncertainty of an Atomic device of an untested design.

Now they can test the real one , and if it fizzles no big deal.

Lanya

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #7 on: October 11, 2006, 01:43:47 PM »
George's Take
Through the Mushroom Cloud
10/09 08:47 AM
I’ve been trying to make sense of the Administration’s foreign policy for quite some time now, and I think I’ve finally got it. In 2002, the President identified three countries – Iraq, Iran, and North Korea – as an “axis of evil,” an axis of terrorist states that were pursuing weapons of mass destruction. We invaded the one member of this axis, Iraq, that was the least likely to obtain nuclear weapons, the one that wasn’t even close to being close to building the bomb, and, in doing so, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and the burden of being embroiled in a lengthy, unsuccessful occupation, managed to succeed in empowering the second member of the axis, Iraq’s neighbor and longstanding enemy, Iran, which the Administration has left free to pursue the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, all while essentially ignoring North Korea, which has now, it appears, successfully detonated an atomic bomb. It’s all clear now.

http://conways.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzQ0YTU0ODRkM2MxODAzZTJhNDhhMmNkMTRhZDUwYTc=
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BT

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #8 on: October 11, 2006, 02:48:10 PM »
Iraq under Saddam was known for attacking its neighbors.

The Euro's were the front men for negotiaons with Iran.

And the surrounding neighbors to N. Korea were all at the table with Jung Il.

Remember the watchword was multilateral. Iran and N. Korea followed that formula.

So what is your author complaining about?

Plane

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Re: North Korea Says Nuclear Test Successful
« Reply #9 on: October 11, 2006, 10:12:04 PM »
Could this have been faked?




http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15217370/


French authoritys are saying that it was a failure or a fake.


What will a self respecting despot do when accused of fakeing a WMD ability?