The United Nations Security Council denounced North Korea’s decision to carry out the test and said it would begin work immediately on a resolution.
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The U.N. Security Council on Friday lambasted North Korea for conducting its fifth nuclear test, despite harsh global sanctions over its repeated provocations.
Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the IISS-Americas think tank, said it was worth seeing if China might increase pressure on the North in return for the United States and South Korea halting plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile defense system created to protect against North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats.
China, North Korea’s only major diplomatic ally, said it was resolutely opposed to the test and urged Pyongyang to stop taking any actions that would worsen the situation.
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. But the test Friday – the North’s fifth and most powerful blast yet – eliminates any doubt that that approach has failed and that the North has mastered the basics of detonating a nuclear weapon.
Initial estimates suggest the nuclear detonation, the country’s fifth, was its most destructive yet – with an explosive power that was the equivalent of between 10,000 and 30,000 tonnes of TNT.
North Korea has also been angered by a US and South Korean plan to install an anti-missile defence system in the South and by the allies’ massive annual joint military exercises, which are still taking place.
Besides an effigy of Kim, the activists burnt anti-nuclear placards displaying the North Korean leader’s photos and slogans reading “Down with North Korea” and “Kim Jong-un out”.
Within hours of the test, North Korea’s neighbors were scrambling to respond.
Japan’s Abe said such a nuclear test could not be tolerated.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it may take more than additional sanctions to resolve the crisis, signalling it may prove a challenge for the Security Council to come to an agreement on new sanctions.
Diplomats said they hoped the pattern and frequency of North Korea’s actions would prompt a faster reaction this time.
Pyongyang has also carried out a string of ballistic missile tests this year in defiance of United Nations sanctions, which have all been condemned by the Security Council.
“The only thing that [the] Kim Jong Un regime can gain from the nuclear tests is stronger sanctions from the worldwide community and its isolation”, she said in a statement.
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”.
USA intelligence estimated the first North Korean test, in October 2006, produced an explosion equal to less than 1 kiloton or the equivalent of under 1,000 tons of TNT.
DPRK’s nuclear test “deserves the strongest condemnation”, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a Friday’s statement, warning that the act, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, will have negative consequences primarily for the DPRK itself.
As a comparison, the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima had a blast yield of 15,000 tonnes.
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US President Barack Obama said he would do what was necessary to protect the US and allies from North Korea. “They aren’t a backwards state any more”, he said. But North Korea has shrugged off all sanctions to date, and can be expected to continue.
