North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.S. Korea detects signs of N. Korea's nuke test
SEOUL, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- South Korea received intelligence on Monday that North Korea might have conducted a nuclear test, officials here said. "President Roh Moo-hyun called in an emergency meeting of related ministers on Monday to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said. "The meeting comes as there has been a grave change in the situation involving the North's nuclear activity."The Bush administration sent a secret warning to the Koreans not to go ahead, or face unspecified consequences. We shall see if their dog's bite is toothless.
He refused to go into further detail, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Omri: And The Wheels Come Off [1] [2] [3]
This nuclear test will provide much grist for the Democrats' partisan mill; they've already tried to pin the lack of progress in North Korea on the Bush Administration, contrasting it with the "progress" made under Clinton. It will be interesting for this Republican to watch the response from across the aisle. More than anything else, this test is an indicator of incredible weakness and increasing desperation, not strength. A cornered lunatic can certainly be dangerous, but was he any less dangerous when he was Albright's and Carter's darling? The knives come out in the open.
China Confidential points out that the entire Axis of Evil is escalating tensions globally in tandem. Syria's unimpressive leader has been talking about declaring war on Israel.
We are living in excruciatingly interesting times.
UPDATE: Seismographic data here. Note that the stations in China et. al. seem to show a smaller event right around the 0130 GMT reported by South Korea's government as the time of the test - and here's the specific 4.2 event near Chongjin - in an area with no historical seismic activity since 1990.
UPDATE: Steven Den Beste says it was very likely a misfire. Another North Korean failure.
Ah, yes, a "secret" warning. I wonder why we even bother to classify things anymore.
How soon till Iran gets it's bomb???
I think it was Edward Said who was vocal in pointing out the fallacy of The West in implicitly viewing The Other as responding to "Us"--as being without independent agency. (If it was indeed Said, then he made at least one valuable contribution.) When stated so baldly, it's a silly notion--because clearly people do things for their own reasons, based on their own points of view, cost/benefit analyses, etc.
Yet with the North Korean Government (or "Kim Family Regime"), as with a number of other players, the concept of Agency is tossed aside by the breathless TV news commenters and angry newspaper editorial page sachems. If only the benighted Bush Administration had done This instead of That! If only My Brilliant Plan of Cajolery, Multilateral Solidarity, Vaguely Menacing Threats, and Scowls had been put into place while there was still time! Why, then--Then!--the KFR would have had to have done Exactly What The International Community Had Demanded, er, Suggested! Kyoto, too!
Perhaps the decades-long plan of the KFR to extort money, food aid, fuel oil, co-development projects, and atomic energy plants from South Korea, the US, and the rest of the civilized world was a long-term plan. Perhaps they worked on making nuclear bombs the entire time because, well, they intended to have nuclear bombs. Perhaps they are designing and producing and testing ballistic missiles because they plan to arm their missiles with warheads.
Complicated and hard to follow, yes, certainly. But still possible--however implausible.
(Of course, this test may itself be a hoax, and thus part of the continuing gamesmanship of the KFR. The point about Agency still stands.)
AMac-
Heh.
On a lighter note.
Nuke test my ass No one's buying it Lil Kim.
Well I spoke too soon
I guess this means Japan will be arming their stockpile as well as ratifying their Constitution.
What have the nuclear tests changed? The balance of power? I don't believe so.
That the US didn't have any credible options? That's been known for some time too.
The real headaches are being had in Beijing.
Jonathan,
The proper question is, "How long until Iran has made sufficient use of the test data to retrofit its existing plutonium implosion warheads for reliable use as ballistic missile warheads using the Chinese design exported to Pakistan in the middle 1980's?" The CIA found that warhead design in A.Q. Khan's luggage then.
The answer to the proper question, IMO, is 90-100 days.
Buehner,
Eat my shorts. I called the month of this test six months in advance. A demon tells me things.
Can I subscribe to your demon's newsletter?
What we're seeing here is directly Clinton's fault. By signing an agreement that everyone knew would be cheated on by North Korea as a substitute for taking action, he, personally, made this day a 100% certainty.
And that day is a 100% certainty, whether or not this particular event is borne out as a nuke. The only question now is when, and that was true the day after Clinton/Carter's "peace in our time (subtext: and war in someone else's)" agreement was signed. That phony agreement, and not his negligence in pursuing al-Qaeda, has always been the #1 screw-up of Clinton's Presidency. It may yet surpass his #2 screw-up in terms of the American lives it costs before all is said and done.
If the GOP has 2 brain cells left, they'll hit that point with everything they have. Which means, of course, even odds at best.
The other truth here is that North Korea is an irrelevant bit player. The real player here is China, as North Korea cannot survive without their ongoing aid. Kim Jong-Il's nuclear plans may be slightly inconvenient, but not inconvenient enough to derail a strategy that still promises net plusses to those pursuing it within China's dictatorship. And so the only way to move them off of that strategy (to use North Korea as their deniable "cut out," while Finalandizing South Korea by raising a threat on one hand, working to push the USA out, and offering to be South Korea's security guarantor) is to make it cost them.
The biggest cost, and the only one that will be real to them in any sense, is to have Kim Jong-Il's detonation result in parallel nuclear proliferation among the nearby states China wishes to dominate/ bully. That would be a foreign policy disaster for the Chinese, and would cause the current architects of China's North Korea policy to be buried along with their policy. That's the only education that works in a system like theirs.
So... if this turns out to be a nuclear test, ignore North Korea. Sanctions et. al are a total waste of time. But make it clear to the Chinese that anything Taiwan chooses to do re: acquiring nuclear technology is no longer of any interest to the USA until Kim's regime is gone - and that the Taiwanese are being briefed to that effect (the US had stopped a Taiwanese nuclear effort by threatening a cutoff of all military aid). Be clear also, and drop public hints, that back-channel discussions have begun with South Korea and Japan that involve America offering them a set number of working nuclear weapons from US stocks as a counterweight. The USA will also support either or both countries if they choose to pursue their own programs, though shipping US weapons is preferred because it does not produce the capacity for further manufacture and so is less destabilizing.
How China chooses to fix the North Korea problem after that and thus stop all of these intiatives is, of course, up to them. Welcome to the big leagues, and have a nice day.
Evariste: I seek an email link for you and (so far) find it not anywhere here or at discardedlies.
Would you be kind enough to email me at n dot maximus at gmail dot com? Thanks.
Nortius-sure. Check your email in a couple of minutes.
Joe,
Unless China takes out the Norks ASAP, the following will happen:
Japan will have nukes in six weeks and a bigger arsenal than China and Israel combined in 5-6 years.
Taiwan will have nukes in six months. It already has the low-level, i.e., not interceptable, road-mobile cruise missile delivery capability to plant those anywhere in China. The ChiCom's fantasies will be busted.
I wouldn't be surprised if we'll learn of some secret deal with China in the next week which involves the swift termination of NK - swift meaning by the end of the year. The Chinese cut off passenger travel to NK last week.
Same here, Gabriel. I checked it only less than an hour ago 12:18 EST. There was nothing the S Cal recording at 1:20 UTC on USGS and nothing at Edinburgh for NK. If I'd only browsed USGS another 5 minutes I would have caught it. Che.
Chosun Ibo says 550 equivalent tons of TNT and a 3.58 Richter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1716098/posts
N. Korea - Blast Site: 129.10 40.81; Blast Strength: 550 Tons of TNT
Chosun Ilbo ^ | 10/09/06
Posted on 10/08/2006 10:13:15 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
3.58 in Richter Scale
Time: 10:35Am, Oct. 9, 2006
Just 550 tons TNT? That doesn't sound right...
Yup. Taiwan plus nukes equals headache squared for the PRC, modulo the ROC command & control mechanisms are, and just what agents in place the PRC has.
Hard to say what the long term payout is on a nuke-holding ROC, though. The card table is getting rickety.
Actually, it is about right.
So it was a pony nuke or as-designed subcrit bang or a fizzle.
"Aint nothin' simple."
USGS now says it was a 4.2 Richter
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/ustqab.php
Magnitude 4.2 - NORTH KOREA
2006 October 9 01:35:27 UTC
Magnitude 4.2 - NORTH KOREA
2006 October 9 01:35:27 UTC
Variations on this picture will perhaps be considered headline-historic some day...
http://tinyurl.com/ezjrh
source URL:
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/?view=eveday&lon=128&lat=42
Richter 4.2 is pretty close to 2kt yield
Which is in tactical nuclear weapon territory, however my guess is their bombs are low-tech, big and heavy, making them not very effective in tactical use anyway.
Steven Den Beste speaks: based on the the seismographic data and the nature of North Korean bombs, this was a misfire and a failed test. It was very likely a misfire. Another North Korean failure.
It has been my contention for quite some time given all the plutonium and other nuke material we have shipped to the region that South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are already members of the nuke club de facto if not de jure.
Joining the Club
Joe,
Clinton shipped a lot of Plutonium to Japan in 1999.
Perhaps what we are seeing is not Clinton's failure but China's revenge.
i.e. Clinton took steps in 1999 to cover the failure of the NK agreement.
"Buehner,
Eat my shorts. I called the month of this test six months in advance. A demon tells me things."
Wow, nobody else saw this one coming. Well done.
The problem with you and Trent's ideas isnt that you guys dont manage to predict the blatantly obvious that the entire world is expecting, but that you use those predictions to advance radical and unproven theories as though they were indisputable eventualities.
Lets see if Iran tests a nuke any time soon, or better yet if NK sends them a functional warhead.
Evariste:
Actually, I'm thinking about cancelling my sub to Stratfor. They're way behind the curve on this one. Well, they do have some decent info, even if they don't always read it correctly.
In 1998, there was speculation that the second of the Pakistan tests was a fizzle based on a low magnitude estimate that was in the rough range of the magnitude estimates of the NK test.