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Seoul: North Korea’s 5th nuke test ‘fanatic recklessness’

This test, on the 68th anniversary of the nation’s founding, would be its most powerful to date, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said, according to Agence France-Presse.

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Instead, the regime has stepped up the pace of missile tests in recent months as it pushes forward with its stated goal of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the US mainland.

As with previous nuclear tests, the waveform generated indicated it had not been naturally occurring, reports the BBC.

South Korea’s military says it is analyzing whether North Korea has conducted its fifth nuclear test after an quake was reported Friday morning.

An official at Seoul’s natural disaster and Volcano Monitoring Division points at the epicentre of seismic waves in North Korea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters Friday that if North Korea had conducted another nuclear test it was “absolutely unacceptable”.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest made a statement on Friday concerning the test.

The South Korean president said the DPRK’s nuclear test proves the “fanatic recklessness” of Pyongyang adhering to nucleardevelopment in a thorough defiance of the worldwide community’s unified will not to accept the DPRK’s nuclear program. As of yet, North Korea has not issued any statement about the explosion, either to confirm or deny that it was a nuclear test.

“We strongly urge the DPRK side to honor the commitment to denuclearization, abide by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and halt any moves that could aggravate the situations”. “This will only escalate the situation”, he said.

The test was conducted at around 9 p.m.

But the leaders have also acknowledged that the sanctions regime still has a huge loophole, as long as China continues as North Korea’s largest trading partner and de facto patron.

“If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by 183 countries since 1996”, she said.

North Korea under third-generation leader Kim Jong-un has lately upped its missile and nuclear campaign, demonstrating its prowess in the field. When CBS News’ Diaz visited in May, the nation put on a major show of military hardware, on parade through the streets of the capital, to celebrate their first nuclear test of the year, on January 6.

Lawmakers in the South warned that Kim Jong-un is advancing faster to miniaturise nukes for use on missiles.

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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. “We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire”.

Unusual North Korea seismic activity probably means fifth nuclear test