North Korea conducted its fifth and biggest nuclear test on Friday and said it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.
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“Our nuclear scientists staged a nuclear explosion test on a newly developed nuclear warhead at the country’s northern nuclear test site”, a North Korean TV announcer said.
This was the first test carried out under new North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. South Korea’s Defense Ministry couldn’t immediately confirm the report.
Leader Kim says the country has acquired a fully-equipped nuclear attack capability and also put the USA mainland within striking distance.
Top diplomats of South Korea and Japan agreed on Friday to push for “additional” measures against North Korea’s latest nuclear test, suggesting that there will be more punitive action on the communist country’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute said surface level recordings indicate a blast with a 20 to 30 kilotonne yield.
His instructions followed Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) detecting an artificial quake centred in North Korea close to a previous test site, which it believes may have been a nuclear test. A second nuclear test this year is a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions. Not only has the range of the weapons successfully tested jumped significantly, but the country is working to ideal new platforms for launching them – submarines and mobile launchers. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned places on earth, and many question whether the penalties work. 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.
Ties between China and the North have become strained in recent years as Pyongyang has pressed ahead with its nuclear tests, and with Kim Jong-Un yet to visit Beijing since inheriting power from his father, who died in 2011.
It is unclear whether the North has achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturised nuclear warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the US.
August 3: South Korean and Japanese officials say North Korea fired a medium-range ballistic missile, likely a Rodong, that flew about 1,000 kilometers (620) miles and landed near Japan’s territorial waters.
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North Korea blames the US and South Korea for its nuclear programme, saying long-running “hostility” from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country’s survival.
