People watch a TV broadcasting a suspected nuclear test held by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Sept. 9, 2016.
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South Korea’s military put the force of the blast at 10 kilotonnes, which would still be the North’s most powerful nuclear blast to date.
North Korea said the test had confirmed that it could mount a nuclear warhead on a rocket.
North Korea likely wanted to show the world that strong global sanctions following its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year haven’t discouraged its efforts to advance its nuclear weapon and missile programs, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University. “Such provocation will eventually hasten its path to self-destruction”.
South Korea’s President Park Geun-Hye condemned the test as an act of “self-destruction” that would deepen the North’s isolation.
Such a yield would make this test larger than the nuclear bomb dropped by the United States on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War 2.
“I would let Pyongyang know in no uncertain terms that it can either get out of the nuclear arms race or expect a rebuke similar to the one Ronald Reagan delivered to Muammar Ghaddafi in 1986”, when the United States president launched airstrikes against Libya for sponsoring terrorism, Trump wrote.
Ms Bishop told reporters in London that the test was in “flagrant breach of numerous security council resolutions”.
The first indications of an underground explosion came when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude “artificial earthquake” near the Punggye-ri nuclear site. They called the event an “artificial” quake.
“ISIS and North Korea are not entirely unconnected because the greatest threat of all would be terrorists getting hands on loose nuclear material”, Clinton said, “so it’s vital we bring the world together to stop North Korea’s risky game”.
North Korean missile technology has increasingly become more sophisticated, and its latest nuclear test is believed to be the most powerful to date.
Whether the North’s announcement of its test is simply the same mixture of boast, threat and propaganda that characterizes much of what North Korea chooses to show in its tightly controlled state media, or a major nuclear advancement, the picture that the North paints for the world may be as important as what actually happened.
Obama spoke with Park by telephone for about 15 minutes as he flew back from Laos, the presidential office in Seoul said.
The United Nations has strongly condemned North Korea’s latest nuclear test and promised new measures against Pyongyang. Agencies in China, reclusive North Korea’s main diplomatic ally, also recorded the tremor. Japan and the US have dispatched jets to test for radiation.
Zhang Liangui, a North Korea expert at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, said that Beijing would likely adopt any new sanctions that the United Nations made a decision to adopt against North Korea following the test.
The Pentagon did not have evidence that North Korea had been able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon, Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross said.
Work on that resolution took two months, with the United States engaged directly with China on the sweeping measures.
Yet Beijing, despite its condemnations, remains a trading partner with North Korea and a source of aid. Gardner said the US should speed up that deployment.
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The seismic activity comes on the 68th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s government and just days after world leaders gathered in China for the Group of Twenty economic summit.
