http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/asia/09korea.html?hp&ex=1160452800&en=a491b0fad3e8d82b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Whoa.
What will China do?
What will neighboring Asian countries do?
How will the U.S. react?
Will Iran take advantage of the situation?
WASHINGTON, Monday, Oct. 9 — North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to join the club of nuclear weapons states.
The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.
American officials cautioned that they had not yet received any confirmation that the test had occurred, and the United States Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula.
But senior Bush administration officials said they had little reason to doubt the country’s announcement.
In South Korea, the country that fought a bloody war with the North for three years and has lived with an uneasy truce and failed efforts at reconciliation for more than half a century, officials announced they believed an explosion occurred around 10:36 p.m. New York time — 11:36 a.m. Monday in Korea — registering 3.58 on the Richter scale.
They identified the source of the explosion as North Hamgyong Province, the rough area where American spy satellites have been focused for several years on a variety of suspected underground test sites.
That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away. The Chinese, who have been North Korea’s main ally, sent an emergency alert to Washington through the United States Embassy in Beijing and President Bush was told shortly after 10 p.m. by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.
The North’s decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the politics of Asia.
The test occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and just as the country was renewing a debate about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons — deeply felt in a country that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 — still makes strategic sense.
And it shook the peninsula just as Mr. Abe was arrived in South Korea for the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing.
Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South Korean government to terminate its “sunshine policy” of trade, tourism and openings to the North — a policy that has been the source of enormous tension between Seoul and Washington since Mr. Bush took office.
The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries, a country of 23 million people that appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors — and particularly the United States — will try to unseat its regime. “I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the country said late Sunday evening. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.”
But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980’s, and by the early 1990’s the C.I.A. estimated that the country could have one or two nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to “freeze” the nuclear program — including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton Administration — ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides.
Three years ago, just as President Bush was sending American troops toward Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining international weapons inspectors living at their nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many — apart from the one presumably tested — the North now stockpiles.
North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. (India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon.) But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, it has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its capabilities.
For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid and trade with the West. But in the end, the country’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, the son of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, appears to have concluded that its surest way of getting what he seeks is to demonstrate that he has the capability to strike back if attacked.
Assessing the nature of that capability is difficult. If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Nor is it clear if the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the starving country’s few significant exports.
But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to proliferate.
That is why President Bush declared in 2003 that the United States would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has never defined what he means by “tolerate,” and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, said that the United States would now go to the United Nations to determine “what our next steps should be in response to this very serious step.”
The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences.
American officials cautioned that they had not yet received any confirmation that the test had occurred, and the United States Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula.
But senior Bush administration officials said they had little reason to doubt the country’s announcement.
In South Korea, the country that fought a bloody war with the North for three years and has lived with an uneasy truce and failed efforts at reconciliation for more than half a century, officials announced they believed an explosion occurred around 10:36 p.m. New York time — 11:36 a.m. Monday in Korea — registering 3.58 on the Richter scale.
They identified the source of the explosion as North Hamgyong Province, the rough area where American spy satellites have been focused for several years on a variety of suspected underground test sites.
That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away. The Chinese, who have been North Korea’s main ally, sent an emergency alert to Washington through the United States Embassy in Beijing and President Bush was told shortly after 10 p.m. by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.
The North’s decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the politics of Asia.
The test occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and just as the country was renewing a debate about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons — deeply felt in a country that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 — still makes strategic sense.
And it shook the peninsula just as Mr. Abe was arrived in South Korea for the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing.
Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South Korean government to terminate its “sunshine policy” of trade, tourism and openings to the North — a policy that has been the source of enormous tension between Seoul and Washington since Mr. Bush took office.
The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries, a country of 23 million people that appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors — and particularly the United States — will try to unseat its regime. “I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the country said late Sunday evening. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.”
But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980’s, and by the early 1990’s the C.I.A. estimated that the country could have one or two nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to “freeze” the nuclear program — including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton Administration — ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides.
Three years ago, just as President Bush was sending American troops toward Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining international weapons inspectors living at their nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many — apart from the one presumably tested — the North now stockpiles.
North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. (India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon.) But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, it has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its capabilities.
For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid and trade with the West. But in the end, the country’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, the son of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, appears to have concluded that its surest way of getting what he seeks is to demonstrate that he has the capability to strike back if attacked.
Assessing the nature of that capability is difficult. If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Nor is it clear if the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the starving country’s few significant exports.
But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to proliferate.
That is why President Bush declared in 2003 that the United States would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has never defined what he means by “tolerate,” and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, said that the United States would now go to the United Nations to determine “what our next steps should be in response to this very serious step.”
What will China do?
What will neighboring Asian countries do?
How will the U.S. react?
Will Iran take advantage of the situation?
