***Scroll down for UPDATES***
North Korea wants to play hardball.
From BREITBART:
"The field of scientific research in the DPRK successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions on October 9, at a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation.
"It has been confirmed that there was no such danger as radioactive emission in the course of the nuclear test as it was carried out under scientific consideration and careful calculation.
"The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent. It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA and people that have wished to have powerful self- reliant defense capability.
"It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."
Fox News is reporting that the DPRK warned China that the test was imminent, and that China then informed the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The U.S. has just confirmed the test.
Amid some serious talk over the last few days, it appeared that the DPRK was rethinking the matter.
Here's a time line from BBC News.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Prime Minister John Howard told parliament this afternoon his government was "disturbed and outraged" by the development.
The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed and that there had been no radioactive leakage from the site.
"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to our military and people,'' KCNA said.
"The nuclear test will contribute to maintaining peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and surrounding region.''
It added: "The nuclear test was conducted by 100 percent of our wisdom and technology.''
From The Jerusalem Post:
The test came amid intense diplomatic efforts aimed at heading off the move.
Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, arrived Monday in Seoul for meetings with President Roh Moo-hyun that had been intended to address strains in relations between Japan and South Korea over territorial and historical disputes, but was overshadowed by news of the nuclear test.
"We must collect and analyze information to determine whether North Korea actually conducted the test," Abe told reporters upon his arrival.
Meanwhile, South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon was also expected later Monday to nominated as the next secretary-general of the United Nations by the Security Council. Ban had previously said he would use the post, which he would assume after Kofi Annan's term expires at the end of the year, to press for a resolution of the North Korean nuclear standoff.
The world is a much different place today than it was when we went to bed last night.
Also posting:
***UPDATED @ 1000 hrs. 10/09/06***
Reuters says that the DPRK may conduct another test:
The chief of South Korea's intelligence agency told lawmakers on Monday it was possible North Korea would carry out a second nuclear test, Seoul's Yonhap news agency quoted one MP as saying.
The lawmaker also quoted Kim Seung-gyu, head of the National Intelligence Service, as telling a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting that unusual signs had been detected at a North Korean town in the afternoon.
The U.S. seeks Chapter 7 and warns North Korea:
The United States will seek U.N. sanctions to curb North Korea's import and export of material that could be used to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction, as well as its illicit financial activities, Ambassador John Bolton said.
Bolton and key U.S. allies, including Britain and France, said they would seek a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter which would seek sanctions, going beyond a resolution adopted by the council in July after North Korea conducted seven missile tests.
Bolton told the Security Council meeting that Washington would view a North Korean attack on South Korea or Japan as an attack on the United States, U.N. diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed. The United States has defense agreements with Tokyo and Seoul, and thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in both countries.
And China warns the U.S. while "condemning" North Korea.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will be the the new U.N. SecGen in January.
If appointed to the top job at the global body, Ban said he would "contribute as much as I can to the resolution of all kinds of problems including the North Korean nuclear issue that may threaten international peace and security."
Damn, he already sounds like Annan.
From FOX News, POTUS comments:
"The United States will meet the full range of our deterrent and security commitments," Bush said in a statement read at the White House.
[...]
President Bush called the transfer of nuclear weapons or material would constitute "a grave threat to the United States, and we hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such actions."
Bush also charged that North Korea had defied the international community, "and the international community will respond," a reference to Monday morning's meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
U.N. Ambassador John Bolton:
Bolton asked the Security Council to apply sanctions on North Korea curbing the trade in materials used in weapons of mass destruction as well as illicit financial activities.
"We've been working very, very closely with the government of Japan on this," Bolton told reporters during a short break in Security Council discussion. "We're looking, as the president said in his comments, for very swift action by the Security Council. We think it's important to respond to even a claim of a nuclear test by the North Koreans."
Bolton said Washington wants a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter that goes beyond the limited sanctions called for in a resolution adopted by the council in July after North Korea conducted seven missile tests. Britain also promised to push for sanctions in the face of the Pyongyang government's defiance.
Bush administration officials say they will push for an "extremely strong U.N. resolution against North Korea that would make it illegal to transfer missile and missile-related items, materials, goods and technology for North Korean weapons of mass destruction programs."
U.S. officials say the White House will seek "much stronger punitive measures" on general trade with North Korea, although they do not believe the country's oil supplies will be targeted.
Ohhh, good, we're going to work together and write a piece of paper tut tutting North Korea yet again. More talking. More politicians doing what politicians do: nothing.
You can bet Iran is watching how we respond to this menace. And so is every other "third world" nation with a despot in power who wants a little attention. Who is next? Chavez in Venezuela? Cuba? Syria? If we can't stop the DPRK or Iran, how can we expect to stop them?
Clinton, Bush, Albright, Rice all have failed us miserably. We've played this nudge nudge wink wink game for years with these people. You pretend to adhere to these treaties and we'll pretend to believe you. Now let's all smooch each other's tushies.
From Security Watchtower:
Any aspirations of the world community in regards to promoting nuclear non-proliferation have just taken a serious hit and the threat of nuclear technology, and indeed perhaps weapons themselves ending up in the hands of non-nation terrorists has just taken a serious leap forward. There is no “Mutually Assured Destruction” policy like that which saw us safely through the Cold War which will work when dealing with a paranoid, irrational government or terrorists who have already demonstrated they have no inhibitions about killing innocent people to make a political statement. Sadly enough, it is our children and grandchildren who will have to deal with the long term consequences of this event. Equally seriously, there is probably no force in the world which will now deter Iran from pursuing a parallel course.
This is the new reality, folks. Nuclear blackmail, terrorism and the looming threat of war. And it's probably much too late to stop it.
Remember how, in the aftermath of 9/11, all the 24/7 news outlets began calling things the "new normal"? Baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.
More:
Video:
Hot Air: Audio: Waybacking the North Korea nuclear crisis
Hot Air: Video: Bush on North Korean nuke test; Update: Equivalent to “several hundred tons of TNT”
Hot Air: Report: North Korea tests nuke; Update: Yield of only 550 tons of TNT...
***UPDATED***:
The USGS report on seismic activity from the blast: USGS Earthquake Hazards Program » Magnitude 4.2 - NORTH KOREA. There's info on the Richter scale HERE.
Underground nuke testing info here: the nuclear information project: Divine Strake 2006. H/T to Hot Air.
And this terrifying article, dated October 6, in the Asia Times Online:
The Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced on October 3 that the DPRK planned to conduct a nuclear test. The Foreign Ministry stated that the planned nuclear test was in response to the grave situation created by the US, where "the supreme national security interests of the DPRK are at stake with the Korean nation standing at the crossroads of life and death".
The nuclear test, once conducted, will have far-reaching implications for the Koreas and the rest of the world. It carries five messages.
The first message is that Kim Jong-il is the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced. Kim is unique in that he is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery. Kim is certainly in the process of achieving the long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American intervention in Korean affairs and bringing together North and South Korea under the umbrella of a confederated state.
Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be better called the American War or the DPRK-US War because the main theater will be the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos. The DPRK is now the fourth-most powerful nuclear weapons state just after the US, Russia, and China.The DPRK has all types of nuclear bombs and warheads, atomic, hydrogen and neutron, and the means of delivery, short-range, medium-range and long-range, putting the whole of the continental US within effective range. The Korean People's Army also is capable of knocking hostile satellites out of action.
All the past Korean heroes let the Land of Morning Calm be reduced to smoking ruins as the wars were fought on its soil, even though they repelled the invaders. One of the two major aspirations of the Korean people has been the buildup of military capability enough to turn enemy land into the war theater. Kim has splendidly achieved this aspiration.The other has been the neutralization and phasing out of the American presence in Korea before the two Koreas come together as a reunified state. When President George W Bush agreed on the 2009 transfer of wartime operational control over South Korean forces to the South Korean president, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signaled the withdrawal of US troops with combat troops relocated from the front line to bases behind Seoul.
The title "the greatest iron-willed, brilliant commander" is reserved for Kim Jong-il, who has led tiny North Korea to acquire the most coveted membership of the elite nuclear club, braving all the nuclear war threats, sanctions and isolation efforts on the part of the US. It is little short of a miracle that the leader has outmaneuvered and outpowered the Bush administration against heavy odds.
Kim is adding to the glory of Koguryo and Dankun Korea, vindicating the military-first policy inspired by tamul (the Koguryo term for standing up to a major power, valuing the pride of being descendants of Dankun Korea, developing newer weapons, restoring lost land and settling old scores with foreign invaders).[...]
"Perhaps the least-noted and most astonishing aspect of the entire diplomatic process involving North Korea during the past few years has been the almost complete inability of four of the world's strongest military and economic powers, including three nuclear weapons states and three members of the UN Security Council - the United States, China and Russia and Japan - to shape the strategic environment in Northeast Asia.
"They have proven thoroughly incapable of preventing an impoverished, dysfunctional country of only 23 million people from consistently endangering the peace and stability of the world's most economically dynamic region. This has been nothing less than a collective failure."The December 29, 2002, Washington Post article by Michael Dobbs says: "US officials note that North Korea's action has been condemned by most of its neighbors and potential big-power patrons, such as China and Russia, Japan and South Korea. Such logic is unconvincing to many experts on North Korea. They contend that Kim is trying to set up a situation in which he wins, whatever happens."
The second point is that a nuclear test will be a legitimate exercise of North Korea's sovereign right in supreme national-security interests of the country. The sole reason for the development of nuclear weapons is more than 50 years of direct exposure to naked nuclear threats and sanctions from the US. The Kim administration seeks to commit nuclear weapons to actual use against the US in case of war, never to use them as a tool of negotiations.
It is sheer illusion to think that sanctions and isolation will stop North Korea from the planned nuclear test. US hostility, threats and sanctions are the very engines that have propelled the development of nuclear weapons. Absent US hostility, nuclear blackmailing, sanctions, threats of isolation and regime change, the Kim administration would never have thought at all of acquiring nuclear deterrence.What makes North Korea unique among those states Bush lumped together as the "axis of evil" is that only it has been subjected to US nuclear threats and sanctions and singled out as a prime target of nuclear preemption. The US refuses to end the state of war with North Korea while keeping combat-ready nuclear-attack forces ready in bases in Japan and South Korea. North Korea is not host to any foreign military bases. The US is engaged in ceaseless nuclear-attack exercises in and around Japan and South Korea.
The US, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan and Israel conducted numerous nuclear detonation experiments in legitimate exercise of their sovereignty. There is no international convention or treaty that prohibits North Korea from conducting underground nuclear tests. No country is allowed to infringe on the sovereignty of North Korea in material breach of Chapter 2 of the UN charter, unless they are prepared to risk triggering nuclear war with North Korea.
The third message is that the nuclear-armed North Korea will be a major boon to China and Russia. Nuclear-armed, the two countries are friendless in case of war with the US. The US has nuclear-armed allies, such as the UK and France. The Americans have a network of military bases around the two countries, while they have none. The presence of a mighty nuclear weapons state in Korea should be most welcome to Russia and China.The People's Republic of China has every reason to welcome a nuclear-armed North Korea, whatever it may say in public. The nuclear deterrence of North Korea is a major factor in reducing US military pressure on China on the question of the independence of Taiwan.
The fourth point is that the North Korea government of Kim does not care at all whether Japan goes nuclear, or that South Korea and Australia follow suit. In the first place, those countries are practically nuclear-armed because they are under the nuclear umbrella of the US and house American nuclear bases and because Tokyo's military spending is 10 times that of Pyongyang's and Seoul's defense budget is five times that of Pyongyang's. It is too obvious that they are capable of acquiring nuclear weapons at short notice.[...]
The fifth and last point is a long, overdue farewell to the nuclear non-proliferation regime, with the Bush administration standing in the dock as prime defendant accused of sabotaging nuclear non-proliferation. Had the Americans been steadfast in upholding the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty by reducing their nuclear weapons and respecting the sovereignty and independence of the non-nuclear states, North Korea would not have felt any need to defend itself with nuclear weapons.
A nuclear test by North Korea will go a long way toward emboldening anti-American states around the world to acquire nuclear weapons. There is a long line of candidate states.
It is important to note that the North Korean Foreign Ministry pledges to faithfully implement its international commitment in the field of nuclear non-proliferation as a responsible nuclear-weapons state and to prohibit nuclear transfer.
Damn. If you're not scared yet, you should be.
These people are nuts.
They hate us.
And now we've allowed them to develop nuclear arms.
We have to stop them today, no matter the cost. Every day forward will simply make matters worse and even more dangerous.
***UPDATED***:
NewsMax says that Iranian scientists may have been present in North Korea when the nuke was tested. As if things weren't bad enough already, right?
Reuters reports that another test, at a different site, may be coming very soon.
The chief of South Korea's intelligence agency told lawmakers on Monday it was possible North Korea would carry out a second nuclear test, Seoul's Yonhap news agency quoted one MP as saying.
The lawmaker also quoted Kim Seung-gyu, head of the National Intelligence Service, as telling a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting that unusual signs had been detected at a North Korean town in the afternoon.
The SF Gate:
Russia's defense minister said Monday that North Korea's nuclear test was equivalent to 5,000 tons to 15,000 tons of TNT.
That would be far greater than the force given by South Korea's geological institute, which estimated it at just 550 tons of TNT.
By comparison the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima during World War II was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.
In 1996, France detonated a bomb beneath Fangataufa Atoll about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti that had a yield of about 120,000 tons of TNT.
South Korean stocks take a dive.
***UPDATED***:
Bill Gertz at The Washington Times is reporting that the NK test yesterday was not nuclear.
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
Hmm, those pesky anonymous "officials" again.
"We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports.
"There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives."
[...]
"Nobody could give me with any precision how long it will take until they can say with certainty what happened."
Nuclear bombs make big waves, with clear signatures that make them fairly easy to detect, analyze and confirm that they were caused by splitting atoms. But smaller blasts -- as North Korea's appears to have been -- are trickier to break down, scientists told the Associated Press. "It takes days, dozens of lab hours, to evaluate results. Now we can have only a rough estimate," said Russian nuclear physicist Vladimir Orlov of the Moscow-based Center for Policy Studies in Russia, a nonproliferation think tank.
But does it even matter, now? DPRK got the reaction they wanted....headline news around the world. They will insist it was nuclear until the end of the world, now. We can produce data to show otherwise but how much difference will that make in the grand scheme of things?
Whether this was a nuke test or not, one thing is certain: we must act and act now. This is not a problem that we can set aside and leave for our children or grandchildren. We must deal with these people - and the Iranians - today.
North Korea is eerily reminsicemt of Germany before Hitler truly became an appallingly powerful force for evil.
World Wars often unfortunately begin with just such 'little' things starting the ball rolling.
Posted by: Anne Elizabeth | October 09, 2006 at 02:27 PM
Brilliant summation...will we have the courage to do whats needed?..thanks for the link hun! :)
Posted by: Angel | October 09, 2006 at 04:08 PM
Anne remembers her history. It DOES repeat itself. We gave Germany too much slack after WWI. There appears to be some hope for resolution now... but seems like it will boil down to war now, or war later.
Posted by: Eric | October 10, 2006 at 03:32 AM