[The test drew a
crescendo of international condemnation Tuesday, with President Obama calling
it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the
international community” against North Korea. Russia, Britain, South Korea and
the United Nations similarly quickly condemned the blast. The head of the
international nuclear watchdog called the test “deeply regrettable” and the United
Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 9 a.m.
New York time to take up the matter.]
By David E. Sanger And Choe Sang-Hun
 |
A
television screen in Pyongyang on Tuesday showed a state-run news
broadcast
announcing that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test.
|
WASHINGTON — North
Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third,
long-threatened nuclear test, according to the official KCNA news service,
posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the
country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.
The KCNA said it used a
“miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than
previously” and that the test “did not pose any negative impact on the
surrounding ecological environment.”
The test drew a
crescendo of international condemnation Tuesday, with President Obama calling
it a “highly provocative act” that demands “swift and credible action by the
international community” against North Korea. Russia, Britain, South Korea and
the United Nations similarly quickly condemned the blast. The head of the
international nuclear watchdog called the test “deeply regrettable” and the United
Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at 9 a.m.
New York time to take up the matter.
Preliminary estimates by
South Korea suggested the test was much more powerful than the previous two
conducted by the North.
Kim Min-seok, a
spokesman for South Korea’s Defense Ministry, said Tuesday’s blast generated an
explosive yield of between six and seven kilotons, far greater than the yield
of less than one kiloton detected in the North’s 2006 test and an estimated
yield of two to six kilotons in its 2009 test. But it appeared less powerful
than the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan, in Hiroshima in 1945,
which had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons.
The test is the first
under the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, and an open act of defiance to the
Chinese, who had urged the young leader not to risk open confrontation by
setting off the weapon. In a relatively muted statement issued several hours
after the blast, China expressed its “staunch opposition” to the test but
called for “all parties concerned to respond calmly.” And it was unclear how
China would act at the United Nations Security Council as it convenes Tuesday.
The nuclear test, came
the same day President Obama is to use his State of the Union address to call for
drastically reducing nuclear arms around the world, potentially bringing the
number of deployed American weapons to roughly 1,000 from the current 1,700.
Even before Pyongyang
conducted Tuesday’s test, the Obama administration had already threatened to
take additional action to penalize the North through the United Nations. But
the fact is that there are few sanctions left to apply against the most
unpredictable country in Asia. The only penalty that would truly hurt the North
would be a cutoff of oil and other aid from China. And until now, despite
issuing warnings, the Chinese have feared instability and chaos in the North
more than its growing nuclear and missile capability, and the Chinese
leadership has refused to participate in sanctions.
Mr. Kim, believed to be
about 29, appears to be betting that even a third test would not change the
Chinese calculus, and later Tuesday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry warned
of “second and third measures of greater intensity” if Washington remains
hostile.
The test set off a
scramble among Washington’s Asian allies to assess what the North Koreans had
done.
The United States sent
aloft aircraft equipped with delicate sensors that may, depending on the winds,
be able to determine whether it was a plutonium or uranium weapon. The Japanese
defense minister, Itsunori Onodera, said Japan had ordered the dispatch of an
Air Self-Defense Force jet to monitor for radioactivity in Japanese airspace.
Japan’s new prime
minister, Shinzo Abe, told Parliament that the country was considering “its own
actions, including sanctions, to resolve this and other issues.”
But the threat may be
largely empty, because trade is limited and the United States and its allies
have refrained from a naval blockade of North Korea or other steps that could
revive open conflict, which has been avoided on the Korean Peninsula since an
armistice was declared 60 years ago.
It may take days or
weeks to determine independently if the test, was successful. American
officials will also be looking for signs of whether the North, for the first
time, conducted a test of a uranium weapon, based on a uranium enrichment
capability it has been pursuing for a decade. The past two tests used
plutonium, reprocessed from one of the country’s now-defunct nuclear reactors.
While the country has only enough plutonium for a half-dozen or so bombs, it
can produce enriched uranium well into the future.
After the detonation,
North Korea’s K.C.N.A. news agency said that the test demonstrated North
Korea’s nuclear deterrence that has become "diversified." South
Korean officials said they were studying whether it meant that North
Korea had actually used highly enriched uranium for bomb fuel, rather
than plutonium.
No country is more interested
in the results of the North’s nuclear program, or the Western reaction, than
Iran, which is pursuing its own uranium enrichment program. The two countries
have long cooperated on missile technology, and many intelligence officials
believe they share nuclear knowledge as well, though so far there is no hard
evidence. Iran is preparing for two important sets of negotiations with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear regulatory
body, starting in on Wednesday, and later this month with the six world powers
seeking to curb its nuclear program.
Yukiya Amano, the
director general of the I.A.E.A., which is based in Vienna, said in a statement
on Tuesday that North Korea’s action was “deeply regrettable and is in clear
violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
He also offered to
“contribute to the peaceful resolution”of the North Korean nuclear issue by
“resuming its nuclear verification activities in the country as soon as the
political agreement is reached among countries concerned.”
The timing of the test
was critical. It came just as a transition of power is about to take place in
South Korea, and the North detested the South’s departing president, the
hard-line Lee Myung-bak. By conducting a test just before he leaves office, the
North could have been both sending a message and giving his successor, Park
Geun-hye, the chance to restore relations after the breach a test will
undoubtedly cause.
While intelligence
officials in Washington and Seoul are jittery about the North’s progress, there
is still no proof that it has yet mastered the difficult technology of
miniaturizing bombs so they can be fitted to ballistic missiles. But arms
experts declared a recent rocket launching a success, suggesting the country
was making advances that could eventually allow it to lob a nuclear-tipped
missile as far as the United States mainland.
The nuclear test came
just weeks after the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling
for the tightening of sanctions against North Korea for that rocket launching,
a violation of earlier resolutions prohibiting the country from testing
ballistic missile technology.
Stung by the promise of
stiffer sanctions, Pyongyang ratcheted up its threats, vowing to build its
capacity to “target” the United States in its most explicit warnings yet. The statement
last month, one in a series of threatening statements over several days, said
the country planned to test more long-range rockets (“one after another”) and
to conduct a nuclear test, despite Washington’s warning that such actions would
lead to more penalties for the impoverished country.
Pyongyang has often
lashed out when it felt ignored, especially by the United States. It was
unclear if the untested Mr. Kim was following a pattern of behavior perfected
by his father, the last North Korean leader, in which the North provoked the
West and Seoul to win more badly needed aid as an inducement to draw it back to
international negotiations on its weapons programs.
Analysts suspect that
Mr. Kim, in the face of more sanctions, might have felt a more urgent need to
assert his standing among his people, who continue to suffer crippling food
shortages they are told is the price of developing a costly and credible
deterrence. He also might have needed to improve his standing with the
military, which has been considered crucial to keeping the Kims in power,
analysts said.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, South Korea. Reporting was contributed by
Jane Perlez from Beijing, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, Chris Buckley and Gerry
Mullany from Hong Kong and Alan Cowell from Paris.
