The United States Geological Service reported a 5.1 magnitude quake that South Korea said was 49km from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted nuclear tests in the past.
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It was not immediately clear what action, if any, the 15-nation council was planning to take in response to the North Korean statement that it had conducted a fourth nuclear test.
On Tuesday evening, seismologists tipped off the Associated Press, who presented a jaw-dropping report of an “artificial quake” near a nuclear plant in North Korea.
It would certainly result in a tightening of worldwide sanctions imposed after the North’s previous nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to ideal a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.
North Korea announced on state television that it tested its first hydrogen bomb.
A nuclear test is as a major slap in the face to the North’s chief ally China and extinguish any chance of a resumption of six-country talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme that Beijing has been pushing for.
The surprise test was personally ordered by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and came just two days before his birthday.
The agency measured the magnitude of the seismic activity at 5.1 on its website on Wednesday. North Korea claimed in 2013 that it had scrapped the 1953 armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War. Pyongyang has also restarted a plutonium nuclear reactor shuttered after a 2007 nuclear deal that later fell apart.
They say the bomb was a measure of self-defence to “protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the US-led hostile forces and to reliably safeguard the peach on the Korean Peninsula and regional security”.
Since the elevation of young leader Kim Jong Un in 2011, North Korea has ramped up angry rhetoric against the leaders of allies Washington and Seoul and the U.S.-South Korean annual military drills it considers invasion preparation.
Meanwhile in the United States, the White House was cautiously monitoring North Korea’s announcement. Nearly four years later, Pyongyang tested additional nuclear weapons. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.
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AP writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this story from Seoul.
