North Korea announced on Wednesday that it has tested a nuclear device, after reports of a non-natural earthquake near a previously-used test site.
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US President Barack Obama spoke to South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to forge a response to “North Korea’s latest reckless behavior”, it said.
The world powers are skeptical that it was indeed a hydrogen bomb and not an atomic bomb, because of the state’s tendency to misstate accurate facts about the happenings in the country.
“The [Revised Event Bulletin] clearly identified the event as a man-made explosion”. Nuclear-tipped missiles could then be used as deterrents, and diplomatic bargaining chips, against its enemies and especially against the United States, which Pyongyang has long pushed to withdraw its troops from the region and to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War.This is indeed a wakeup call, Lassina Zerbo, the head of the Vienna-based U.N. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which has a worldwide network of monitoring stations to detect nuclear testing, told AP by phone.
Concern in Japan over potential radiation drifting across the sea from North Korea skyrockets whenever it conducts underground nuclear tests, though none has ever been traced to the country after its three previous ones. For now, the general consensus is that it could have been a boosted-fission bomb, which would be more powerful than the simply fission implosion devices it tested before, but far short of a genuine two-stage H-bomb.
The U.N. Security Council that has pledged new sanctions against North Korea after its purported hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday.
One of them was to back up leader Kim Jong-un’s statement last month that the country developed an H-bomb and the other goal was to persuade China, North Korea’s main patron, to back off pressuring the regime to abandon its nuclear program, the report said.
The test, personally ordered by leader Kim Jong-Un, was of a miniaturised H-bomb, Pyongyang said, adding that it had now joined the ranks of “advanced nuclear nations”. To comply with the Security Council’s sanctions regime, North Korea would have to abandon not only its strategic deterrent but also the foundation of its medium-term economic development strategy, the pillar of its institutional governance structure, and its associated ideological and propaganda commitments.
John Delury, an expert on Korea and China at Seoul’s Yonsei University, describes the note’s message like this: “Let no one be confused; there’s no factional struggle; the military isn’t telling him what to do”. This could have worked when I first proposed it 2008 after one of my seven visits to North Korea. It claims to have detonated a hydrogen bomb, which, if proven true, would add a much more powerful weapon to Pyongyang’s arsenal. On top of these measures, the United States has maintained its own set of unilateral sanctions targeting top North Korean officials related to the weapons programs. “Any deal with North Korea which will imply money transfers and aid will be seen – with good reasons – as tantamount to rewarding a blackmailer”.
Wednesday’s nuclear test by the DPRK has jolted the worldwide community.
Kim may be associating himself closely with what his state media call the “H-bomb of justice” in part because a hydrogen bomb would be a clear advance on the nuclear tests conducted under his father’s rule.
The Security Council has held an emergency meeting to work immediately on sanction measures. “Pyongyang’s nuclear stockpile will continue to expand, the North will continue to ideal its missile delivery systems, the danger of weapons-of-mass-destruction exports will grow, and the threat to USA allies will increase”.
The Japan Times quoted a senior official in Tokyo as saying that a North Korea armed with a new nuclear weapon would expose Japan to its “biggest threat”.
“We have to face the reality that sanctions alone will not leverage the North Korean policy in the absence of a fundamental change in Chinese policy”, DeThomas said.
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His rapid rise in the Korean People’s Army was aided by being related to a guerrilla soldier who fought alongside North Korea’s founder President Kim Il Sung during the Japanese colonial period.
