North Korea claimed the latest test was a trial explosion of a nuclear warhead.
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“The standardisation 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”.
Penn: Well, my guess would be that there will be some kind of new sanctions but what you have to realize is that North Korea’s already under quite heavy sanctions and there’s not really many tools in the toolbox which are left remaining for them to use.
The nuclear program has been accompanied by a series of ballistic missile launches, including from a submarine.
Combine that with everything scientists have learned from the four previous tests and North Korea may now have nuclear weapons capable of attacking its Asian neighbors, said nuclear expert Whang Joo-ho of Kyung Hee University in South Korea.
Not only has the range of North Korea’s weapons increased, but the country also is working to ideal new platforms for launching them – submarines and mobile launchers – giving North Korea greater ability to threaten the tens of thousands of US troops stationed throughout Asia.
Obama held unscheduled meetings with Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after the missile tests and said Washington needed to maintain a sense of urgency within the global community on sanctions against Pyongyang.
Whatever the state of the program, one thing is clear: The fifth test was the most powerful to date.
The blast set off an artificial natural disaster about 9:30 a.m. Seoul time, with the U.S. Geological Survey putting the quake’s magnitude at 5.3.
Thus, it is important to increase the deterrence against North Korea by developing and deploying new interceptor missiles, and improving collaboration with the United States and South Korea, based on the foundation of the USA nuclear umbrella.
South Korea’s military said the seismic event indicated a blast with a 10-kilotonne yield, still the largest ever conducted by the secretive North. The North’s fourth test was an estimated 6 kilotons.
This power strongly indicates a legitimate advance.
In both South Korea and Japan, increasingly vocal minorities have begun to advocate developing their own nuclear weapons as a deterrent. “Weapons are now far more advanced now than during the cold war”.
“But it has not yet completed the re-entry technology needed to develop an ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile) that could hit Hawaii or the United States mainland”, Yang said.
“We have made overture after overture to the dictator of North Korea”, he said, including on normalizing the country’s relationship with the West and a formal peace agreement to replace the 1953 armistice.
If the North has mastered miniaturization, the next step would be making and stamping bombs that can be put on warheads.
Power said the Council will take additional significant steps, including new sanctions, to demonstrate to North Korea that there are “consequences to its unlawful and unsafe actions”.
In a statement via the state-run KNCA news agency, Pyongyang said the tests had confirmed the movement of nuclear warheads that had “been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets”.
A South Korean government official said it was a suspected nuclear test, Yonhap reported, and Seoul called for an emergency National Security Council meeting.
This test, portrayed as an overwhelming success, could allow the North to turn more attention to its moribund economy and a population that often struggles to find enough to eat. Pyongyang recently stated that it will not quit its nuclear program because of the long-running hostility from Seoul and Washington on the other hand.
From a purely propaganda point of view, the North’s statement Friday satisfies an important requirement: It portrays a strong, proud country led by a great leader.
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In his phone conversation with Abe on Friday, Obama stressed the resoluteness of the United States’ commitment to Japan’s security, including through “extended deterrence”.
