North Korea’s Friday nuclear test has met with similar criticisms from global bodies and other countries.
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North Korea is banned by the United Nations from any tests of nuclear or missile technology and has been hit by five sets of United Nations sanctions since its first test in 2006.
As Commander in Chief, I have a responsibility to safeguard the American people and ensure that the United States is leading the global community in responding to this threat and North Korea’s other provocations with commensurate resolve and condemnation.
Friday is North Korea’s national day and the nuclear test also comes just after U.S. President Barack Obama left Asia after attending worldwide summits in China and Laos.
North Korea said there was no radioactive material leaked, but the explosion put the region on edge.
Ryoo Yong-gyu, natural disaster and Volcano Monitoring Division director, points at the epicenter of seismic waves in North Korea, indicating an underground nuclear test, during a media briefing in Seoul on September 9.
Pyongyang has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches since top North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave an order on March 15 to test a nuclear warhead and ballistic rockets capable of carrying the warhead “in a short time”. Residents in Pyongyang, North Korea, look at a giant screen in front of the capital’s railway station showing a presenter officially announcing a successful nuclear test earlier in the day, September 9, 2016. “But what North Korea is aiming for is to put them on an intercontinental ballistic missile”, she said. But they center on a technological mystery that has long bedeviled outside experts: How far has North Korea gotten in efforts to consistently shrink down nuclear warheads so they can fit on long-range missiles?
South Korean President Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the test, saying in a statement that it showed the “fanatic recklessness of the Kim Jong Un government as it clings to nuclear development”.
In January, North Korea said it had detonated a hydrogen bomb with success. In an angry statement released after the U.N. Security Council condemned its submarine-launched ballistic missile test late last month, a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Pyongyang warned of “deadly strikes to be made by the enraged people” of North Korea. In comparison, North Korea fired 16 ballistic missiles during the 17-year rule of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.
Any test will lead to a strong push for new, tougher sanctions at the United Nations and further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors.
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North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has always been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for USA administrations. “We must strongly protest against it”, Abe said, adding that Japan would liaise closely on the matter with the US and South Korea. The South Korea Meteorological Administration measured the quake as magnitude 5.0 but said it believed it was artificial. “As I should know how to protect myself, we should defend our own country”.
