North Korea’s state TV says Friday’s nuclear test “examined and confirmed” specific features of a nuclear warhead created to be mounted on ballistic missiles. A second nuclear test this year is a defiant response to Western pressure on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear ambitions.
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A statement from the South Korean military also said that an artificial tremor, registered as magnitude 5.0, had originated from Punggye-ri in northeastern North Korea, where the North has conducted its four previous underground nuclear tests.
“The test caught many off guard, although Seoul officials have for months maintained that the North was maintaining a condition in which it was ready to stage a nuclear test any time”, saidKim Jin-Moo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test on Friday, just eight months after it claimed it successfully detonated a small hydrogen bomb. “As a South Korean citizen, I deplore this”.
Some Korean observers say that because Kim Jong Un’s regime is underpinned by being a full-fledged nuclear state, no amount of financial squeeze will stop him.
“We will continue to put some of the toughest pressure North Korea has ever been under as a effect of this behavior”, Obama said.
The EAS urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and uphold its worldwide legal obligations. Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006; 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.
The North’s third nuclear test, staged in February 2013, was previously considered the most powerful to date, with a yield of six to nine kilotons.
“Our. party sent a congratulatory message to our nuclear scientists. for conducting the successful nuclear warhead explosion test”, she said as the South judged it was the North’s biggest test yet at 10 kilotons.
Park’s office said she spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the test Friday morning, during a regional summit in Laos.
The test is another slap in the face to the North’s chief ally China which has been under pressure to rein in its increasingly embarrassing behaviour.
“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.
North Korea’s persistent pursuit of missiles and nuclear weapons has always been one of the most intractable foreign policy problems for USA administrations.
North Korea claimed its January test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which can be far more powerful than other nuclear devices. Six-nation negotiations on dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear programme in exchange for aid were last held in late 2008 and fell apart in early 2009, when North Korea was led by Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011.
North Korea blames the United States and South Korea for its nuclear program, saying long-running “hostility” from Seoul and Washington to its government makes the development crucial for the small country’s survival.
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Across the border, Jeong Jong-kook said that South Koreans are nervous about North Korea’s nuclear experiment.
