U.S., European and Chinese seismological agencies reported that the tremor was recorded at 0030 GMT at surface level.
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The test, when coupled with the three successful ballistic missile launches earlier in the week, offered a hint to world leaders that North Korean engineers and scientists are making another incremental, yet significant, step in their nuclear weapons program.
The China Earthquake Networks Center said the tremor was a suspected explosion.
Despite UN sanctions, Pyongyang claims it is now able to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, greatly increasing the threat to surrounding nations.
The South Korean minister emphasized that Friday’s nuclear test by Pyongyang is a crucial violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2270, calling the nuclear fiasco “a grave provocation”.
After the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced it has successfully carried out another nuclear test on Friday, the worldwide community voiced its strong condemnation over the event.
The UN Security Council condemned the test and announced that it will consider new sanctions against Pyongyang in addition to others already imposed in March after its nuclear and long-range missile tests in January and February respectively.
“It is too early to bury the six-party talks”.
However China’s Ambassador Liu Jieyi said: “We are opposed to testing and we believe that it is more urgent than ever to work together to ensure denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.
Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan – which had called for the emergency United Nations meeting – described North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme as a “grave threat” to Japan.
During a phone conversation with Han late Friday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stressed the “ironclad” alliance among the U.S. and its allies including South Korea, pointing at various means such as the nuclear umbrella, traditional deterrents and missile defense measures that can deter North Korean nuclear ambitions, according to the defense ministry here. It took two months of negotiations mainly between the USA and China.
On Saturday, the Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times said North Korea was wrong in thinking that building nuclear weapons would provide it with more security or prestige. He expressed Washington’s intention to work closely with Japan and also with South Korea. But he added: “Given the consequences of getting it wrong, it is prudent for a military planner to plan for the worst”.
“The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”, North Korea said.
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That would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two, which had an output of about 15 kilotonnes.
