China’s Environment Ministry has begun emergency radiation monitoring along border regions in northeastern China after North Korea carried out a suspected nuclear test, state television said on its official microblog on Friday.
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“The Agency continues to closely follow the DPRK nuclear issue”.
Friday’s nuclear test came hours after President Barack Obama wrapped up the final Asian tour of his presidency, a pair of summits in China and Laos that included talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping that underscored stark differences on how to deal with between Washington and Beijing, North Korea’s only ally. Friday’s bomb-induced 5.3 natural disaster was a magnitude and therefore ten times bigger, indicating a significantly more powerful nuclear blast. At the time, the U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected a missile entering space, while South Korea’s military said an object had been placed into orbit, Reuters reported. “They aren’t a backwards state any more”, Lewis added.
North Korea later claims a successful test of a powerful new midrange missile, which it says reached a maximum height of 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) before landing 400 kilometers (248 miles) away in targeted waters.
After a previous nuclear test in 2013, the North restarted a plutonium reactor that it had shut down at its Yongbyon complex in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord. The bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotonnes.
The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North’s fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons – approaching the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945, experts in Seoul said.
Park spoke out against the “manic recklessness” of the North’s young ruler Kim Jong-Un, who has exulted in a series of ballistic missile launches and the last nuclear test in January.
Earthquakes triggered by North Korean nuclear tests have gradually increased in magnitude since Pyongyang’s first test in 2006, indicating the isolated country is steadily improving the destructive power of its nuclear technology.
That test was recorded with a magnitude of 5.1, according to the US Geological Survey. Incheon is the coastal city where the United Nations Forces led by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in September, 1950 just months after North Korea invaded the South.
South Korea’s vice finance minister said the government would closely monitor financial markets and guard against geopolitical risks linked to North Korean actions, and promised to take measures to stabilise markets if needed.
In July, satellite images appeared to show high levels of activity at the country’s nuclear test site – and speculation has been growing that Kim Jong-un was planning a fifth test after the U.S. blacklisted him for human rights abuses.
Dec 11, 2015: Kim Jong Un says North Korea is “ready to detonate” a hydrogen bomb.
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“I believe China will be driven into the most hard position” as the global community expects Beijing to act to ease tensions, said Shunji Hiraiwa, professor at Kwansei Gakuin University and an expert on the Korean peninsula. The South Korea Meteorological Administration measured the quake as magnitude 5.0 but said it believed it was artificial.
