Search for traces of radionuclide or radioactive materials like xenon has been launched by South Korea and the U.S. Saturday after North Korea confirmed it successfully carried out a fifth nuclear test, the South’s military officials told Yonhap News Agency.
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The test, which Pyongyang said was a “nuclear warhead explosion”, appeared to be North Korea’s biggest yet.
Kimball from the Arms Control Association said North Korea has not yet demonstrated the ability to launch a medium- or long-range missile that can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and is still years away from having an intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead that can hit the continental U.S.
“We estimate that North Korea has an inventory of 15 or 20 nuclear weapons and that they could be put on a truck or a short-range missile”.
The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.
Clinton also said that she would never accept the North as a nuclear power.
Obama said he restated to Park and Abe, “the unshakable US commitment to take necessary steps to defend our allies in the region, including through our deployment of a terminal high-altitude area defense, or THAAD, battery to the ROK, and the commitment to provide extended deterrence guaranteed by the full spectrum of USA defense capabilities”.
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the council must use “every tool at its disposal” including new sanctions “to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for its unlawful and risky actions”.
The US leader consulted by telephone with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following news of the reclusive country’s fifth and most powerful test. This puts “on a higher level (the North’s) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets”.
Then, on Friday, it said it had “standardized” nuclear warheads so that it could produce “a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”. It said it would lodge a protest with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.
The North later confirmed that it successfully conducted a nuclear detonation test, sending political ripples through the global community.
” But I regret to tell you that it has not been materialized because of many different situations, mainly caused by North Koreans’ provocative actions”, Ban said.
The air-sampling mission supports the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibits any nation from above-ground nuclear weapons testing.
The campaign said Friday the fifth test is yet another outcome of Clinton’s failure in North Korea policy as secretary of state.
“The 10-kiloton blast was almost twice the (power of the) fourth nuclear test and slightly less than the Hiroshima bombing, which was measured about 15 kilotons”, said Kim Nam-Wook of the South’s meteorological agency.
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The dictatorial nation has wilfully violated five UN nuclear sanctions, including trade and banking restrictions, which have been imposed on the country since it detonated its first nuclear device in 2006. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009.
