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White House Disputes North Korea’s Claim of Hydrogen Bomb Test
White House Disputes North Korea’s Claim of Hydrogen Bomb Test
(about 4 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — The White House said Wednesday that initial data from its monitoring stations in Asia were “not consistent” with North Korea’s claim that the nuclear test it carried out earlier in the day was its first test of a hydrogen bomb, a far more powerful weapon than the country had previously built.
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council condemned North Korea for its nuclear test on Wednesday, but there was no evidence yet that the North’s most powerful backer, China, was willing to stiffen sanctions in a way that could push the unpredictable country to the point of collapse or slow its nuclear progress.
The statement by Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, came as the United Nations Security Council condemned the test after a two-hour closed-door meeting, and after China, Britain, France, Japan and other powers indicated that they would consider action against the country.
As the question of how the international community should respond remained unanswered, White House officials, eager to undercut whatever propaganda value the North saw in claiming its first success in detonating a thermonuclear device, said that initial data from its monitoring stations in Asia were “not consistent” with a test of a hydrogen bomb.
The United States did not indicate the basis for its skepticism. But the seismic wave left by the explosion was smaller than what most experts would expect from the detonation of a true thermonuclear weapon. Some experts said it was possible that the North had increased the yield of a more traditional device using tritium, a technique that has often been used in the 70-year history of nuclear weapons.
A two-hour closed session of the Security Council on Wednesday afternoon ended with a pledge to “begin to work immediately” on a resolution containing additional measures to rein in Pyongyang. It did not specify what those measures could be, and in the past, China and Russia have usually objected to steps that could threaten the North’s survival. The most obvious would be a prohibition on loading or unloading North Korean ships around the world, or on financial transactions with the nation.
The true nature of the test may not be revealed until results are back from atmospheric testing, and even they may be inconclusive.
The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, did not indicate the basis for the administration’s skepticism of Pyongyang’s claim. But more than a month ago, when Kim Jong-un, the country’s young leader, boasted that he possessed the technology for a hydrogen bomb, American officials said they had a variety of evidence — some technical, some from human sources — to call that claim into question.
Earlier in the day, officials and analysts in South Korea cast doubt on the North’s claim, saying that the seismological data from the test was more in keeping with a simpler uranium- or plutonium-based atomic device.
A hydrogen bomb would be far more powerful, and more fearsome, than the type of nuclear weapon the North has tested three times since 2006, when it conducted its first test during the George W. Bush administration.
Lee Cheol-woo, a member of the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, said his country’s National Intelligence Service had estimated that the explosive yield from the test was equivalent to six kilotons of TNT. (By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with 15 kilotons of energy.)
The seismic wave left by the explosion was smaller than what most experts would expect from the detonation of a true thermonuclear weapon. Some experts said it was possible the North had increased the yield of a more traditional device by using tritium, a common technique in the 70-year history of nuclear weapons.
A hydrogen bomb would have yielded “hundreds of kilotons or, even if it is a failed test, tens of kilotons,” Mr. Lee told reporters. The North’s last nuclear test, in February 2013, set off a magnitude 4.9 tremor. The South estimated that the bomb detonated on Wednesday resulted in a magnitude 4.8 seismic event, smaller than the 4.9 to 5.2 range that American, European and Chinese authorities had reported.
But the true nature of the test may not be revealed until results are back from atmospheric testing, usually conducted by Air Force planes that run along the North Korean coast “sniffing” for byproducts of an explosion. Yet after the last test, in 2013, such inquiries were inconclusive.
In Seoul, President Park Geun-hye convened an urgent meeting of her top national security aides. As South Korea’s military increased its vigilance along the heavily militarized border with the North, its diplomats rushed to discuss with allies what Ms. Park called “strong sanctions” against Pyongyang.
“We may never know,” said one intelligence official involved in the testing. “The technology is pretty hit-and-miss.”
She said that Pyongyang’s claim, if true, “could potentially shake up the security landscape of Northeast Asia and fundamentally change the nature of the North Korean nuclear threat.”
Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in the president’s first term, said Wednesday that the timing of the test was strange, with North and South Korea discussing restoring some economic ties and the North trying to reach out to the Chinese.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called the test “totally unacceptable” and “a grave threat to Japan’s security,” and he called on the Security Council to take “firm measures.”
“I think the Chinese thought they had a deal going” to prevent a nuclear test, said Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator with North Korea under President Bush.
Pyongyang’s sole major ally, China, has been increasingly impatient with the North’s behavior and did not hide its displeasure on Wednesday. “Today, despite the opposition of the international community, North Korea carried out a nuclear test,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a news conference in Beijing. “China is strongly against this act.”
Even China used unusually strong language, probably because it also appeared to have been given no warning about the test, which the North claimed — against considerable evidence to the contrary — was its first effort to detonate a hydrogen bomb. The Chinese said they were “strongly against this act,” and their ambassador to the United States met with Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, at the White House.
But so far, Beijing has not been willing to totally cut off Pyongyang. “China may strongly criticize the North, but once the issue arrives at the Security Council, it will focus on preventing sanctions that can affect the stability of the North Korean regime,” said Chun Yung-woo, a senior adviser at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul and a former top negotiator for South Korea in nuclear talks with the North. “North Korea knows it too well.”
President Obama said nothing in public about the test, in contrast to Mr. Bush, who responded to the first North Korean test in 2006 by declaring that the North would be held responsible if its bomb technology were found anywhere else in the world.
China, Japan, Russia and the United States, along with the Koreas, are parties in the long-suspended six-nation talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear weapons program. At a summit meeting in Washington in October, Ms. Park and President Obama urged Pyongyang to rejoin those negotiations and warned against a fourth nuclear test. But North Korea insisted that the United States first agree to negotiate a peace treaty with the North to replace the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.
Advisers said Mr. Obama was calculating that Mr. Kim was looking to get a rise out of him. “He’s not going to give him the satisfaction,” one aide said.
The content and timing of the North’s announcement came largely as a surprise, though Pyongyang’s seemingly erratic behavior may be part of a calculated strategy to raise the stakes in any negotiations with the South and with the United States, and to bolster the reputation of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, at home before an important party meeting.
Some American officials, declining to speak on the record, speculated that a dustup last month over the treatment of an all-female band that North Korea sent to Beijing might have so angered Mr. Kim that he ordered the test to go ahead.
Last month, Mr. Kim claimed for the first time that his country was ready to explode a hydrogen bomb, and in a New Year’s Day speech, he called for “modernized” and “more diverse means of military strike.” Still, the speech did not specifically mention nuclear weapons, and it also emphasized the need to improve living standards, so few if any officials or analysts had seen the test coming.
Just before the band was supposed to perform, Mr. Kim declared that the North possessed hydrogen bomb technology. The Chinese, with no explanation, downgraded the level of officials scheduled to attend the performance, and the band then headed home without performing.
“This raises skepticism about our intelligence-gathering capabilities,” said Kim Dong-yup, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“I know this sounds like a crazy reason to set off a nuclear test,” one American intelligence official said. “But stranger things have provoked North Korean action.”
Since inheriting power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in late 2011, Mr. Kim has purged top members of his party and of the military elite — and he has proved to be more ambitious than his father in the pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, even in the face of warnings from China.
But it is far from clear that all the major players with a stake in what the North does are willing to take the kind of risks, and impose the kind of sanctions, that might prompt Pyongyang to back down or, alternatively, to lash out.
Under Mr. Kim, North Korea launched two long-range rockets, putting a satellite into orbit in the second attempt, in December 2012. The same year, the North revised its Constitution to declare itself a nuclear power. Two months after the North’s third — and Mr. Kim’s first — nuclear test, in February 2013, his Workers’ Party adopted a new national strategy: growing its nuclear arsenal and rebuilding its economy at the same time.
Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association in Washington, argued that stiffening existing sanctions, while sending a political message, would be insufficient.
Mr. Kim wants his people to consider nuclear weapons the linchpin of their survival, but Washington and Seoul have repeatedly warned that the North’s nuclear ambitions would only deepen its isolation.
“Ratcheting up sanctions pressure demonstrates that there is a cost to violating Security Council resolutions,” she said in an email. “However, sanctions alone are not going to change Pyongyang’s behavior. North Korea has complex illicit trafficking networks for evading sanctions, and not all countries in the region are adequately enforcing existing measures.”
“The benefits of being a nuclear power — to deter external threats and prove strength domestically — must in his mind outweigh the costs of facing yet another round of condemnation and sanctions, which Pyongyang is used to by now,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “So with this test, he projects power and claims to enhance national security.”
The one time the United States did clearly get the North’s attention was when it cut off bank accounts in Macau that Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader, used to finance the lifestyle of the North Korean elite. But eventually, the Bush administration had to lift that sanction, partly under pressure from allies.
The Workers’ Party is scheduled to hold its first full-fledged congress since 1980 this May. With no big improvements in the lives of North Koreans, Mr. Kim needs something else to show for his four-year-old rule.
On Wednesday, American allies engaged in a now-familiar set of rituals.
“The biggest achievement Kim Jong-un can offer ahead of the party congress is his nuclear program,” said Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute. “It also means that things don’t look good in the economic sector.”
President Park Geun-hye of South Korea convened an urgent meeting of her top national security aides in Seoul and said the North’s claim, if true, could “shake up the security landscape of Northeast Asia and fundamentally change the nature of the North Korean nuclear threat.”
Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea specialist at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, said the North had made its hydrogen bomb claim to position itself in the United States presidential campaign and, perhaps, to enter negotiations with the next administration with increased leverage.
Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Motohide Yoshikawa, told reporters after the Security Council meeting that his government expected the Council to adopt a robust resolution to check North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Otherwise, he said, “the authority and credibility of the Security Council will be put in jeopardy.”
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear from the North’s pronouncements that its ultimate goal is to cement its status as a nuclear power, and to use that position to haggle with Washington and its allies to win diplomatic recognition and other concessions.
The American ambassador, Samantha Power, called for a “tough, comprehensive and credible package of new sanctions.”
“There can neither be suspended nuclear development nor nuclear dismantlement on the part of the North unless the U.S. has rolled back its vicious hostile policy toward the former,” North Korea said in a brief announcement on Wednesday. It said Mr. Kim had made up his mind last month to conduct the hydrogen bomb test, and had signed a final order on Sunday.
But the Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, would say only that a “proportionate response” was necessary, without elaborating.
Mr. Chun, the former negotiator, warned that it would be a mistake for Washington and Seoul to rely on China using its economic leverage to force North Korea to change course. He said the North would budge only if the United States and its allies put in place sanctions strong enough to threaten its survival, like denying port calls for ships carrying North Korean cargo.
For Mr. Kim, there was some domestic politics in all this. His Workers’ Party is scheduled to hold its first full-fledged congress since 1980 this May. With no big improvements in the lives of North Koreans, Mr. Kim needs something else to show for his four-year rule.
China, a permanent member of the Security Council, could veto any additional sanctions.
“The biggest achievement Kim Jong-un can offer ahead of the party congress is his nuclear program,” said Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “It also means that things don’t look good in the economic sector.”
