This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test.html

The article has changed 16 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 11 Version 12
Defying U.N., North Korea Confirms Third Nuclear Test Defying U.N., North Korea Confirms Third Nuclear Test
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — North Korea confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted its third, long-threatened nuclear test, provoking international rebukes, eliciting pledges of further punitive action from the United Nations Security Council and posing a new challenge for the Obama administration in its effort to keep the country from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. UNITED NATIONS — At the United Nations, the desire to impose ever harsher sanctions on North Korea to try to curb its development of nuclear arms and ballistic missiles has long stalled in the face of Chinese opposition — the standard chain of events playing out here again on Tuesday after North Korea said it had carried out its third nuclear test.
The official K.C.N.A. news service of North Korea said the country had 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.” Security Council diplomats and the experts who track sanctions enforcement are quick to tick off the contents of a deeper toolbox that could be used to try to corral Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
Early Tuesday morning in Washington the office of the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., issued a statement suggesting the North Koreans were, on their third try, beginning to produce nuclear devices with substantial explosive power. “The explosion yield was approximately several kilotons,” the announcement said, which was less specific than a South Korean Defense Ministry estimate of six to seven kilotons. They include banning specific, high-tech items used in the nuclear program like epoxy paste for centrifuges; barring a host of dual use goods like magnets; and a far more stringent inspection of ships bound to and from North Korea.
That would be far greater than the yield of less than one kiloton detected in the North’s 2006 test, but it is unclear how it would measure up to the last test, in 2009, which had an estimated yield of two to six kilotons. By comparison, the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan, which devastated Hiroshima in 1945, had an explosive yield of 15 kilotons. But the sanctions in place are almost exclusively focused on nuclear and ballistic missile activity.
The claim about miniaturizing the device could be important, if true. But there has been no proof yet that the North has yet mastered the difficult technology of making bombs small enough to be fitted to ballistic missiles that could eventually be lobbed as far as the United States mainland. “If we had the kind of product listing and focus on financial flows and interdiction on North Korea that we placed on Iran, we would not be in this spot,” said George Lopez, a professor at Notre Dame and a former member of the United Nations panel of experts charged with monitoring sanctions compliance.
The test drew a crescendo of international denunciations, 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 also quickly condemned the blast. The head of the international nuclear watchdog called the test “deeply regrettable,” and the United Nations Security Council — which has already passed three resolutions aimed at punishing North Korea for its nuclear weapons-related work, met in emergency session to devise a fourth resolution. The problem has always been what China will bear in terms of restricting its protégé and neighbor.
Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan of South Korea, whose country holds the monthly rotating presidency of the Security Council, emerged from the meeting before noon to read a statement from all 15 members that they had “strongly condemned this test,” and were beginning to work immediately on “appropriate measures in a Security Council resolution.” He declined to specify what was envisioned but emphasized that all members, including North Korea’s ally and neighbor China, wanted action that would convince the North to “abandon its nuclear ambition.” “Moving forward, China really holds the key to what extent the actions will be different this time,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, an expert at the Asia Society.
The South Korean foreign minister also said North Korea would “be held responsible for any consequences of this provocative act.” The signs are hard to read.
Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters that the Security Council “must and will deliver a swift, credible and strong response.” She also declined to specify what a new resolution might do, but said “we and others have a number of further measures that we will be discussing” that would tighten existing measures and “augment the sanctions regime.” China will almost certainly join the United States in supporting tougher sanctions over Tuesday’s test, accompanied by sterner reprimands from Beijing against its recalcitrant ally in Pyongyang.
Preliminary estimates by South Korea suggested that the test was more powerful than the previous two conducted by the North. But as impatient as China might be with North Korea, there is little chance that the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, will move quickly to change the nation’s long-held policy of propping up the walled-off government that has long served as a buffer against closer intrusion by the United States on the Korean Peninsula.
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 Mr. Kim 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 will handle any Security Council push for more sanctions. The Chinese military, and to a lesser extent the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, assert strong influence on China’s Korea policy, and both powerful entities prefer to keep North Korea close at hand, Chinese and American analysts say.
The nuclear test came the same day Mr. 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. While the People’s Liberation Army is not even able to conduct military exercises with the North Koreans — the government in the North forbids such contact with outsiders — Chinese military strategists adhere to the doctrine that they cannot afford to abandon their ally, no matter how bad its behavior, analysts here say.
Even before the North conducted Tuesday’s test, the Obama administration had already threatened to take additional action to penalize the country 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. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party looks upon the North Korean Communist Party — led by Kim Jong-un, the grandson of the nation’s founder — as a fraternal brotherhood. Indeed, relations between the two countries are conducted largely between the two parties rather than between the two foreign ministries, the more normal diplomatic channel.
Mr. Kim, believed to be about 29, appeared 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. But within this basic contour there could be some adjustments by Mr. Xi, according to Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University, an advocate of a tougher policy by China against North Korea.
The test set off a scramble among Washington and its Asian allies to assess what the North Koreans had done. “One nuclear test will not make China’s new administration decide to ‘abandon North Korea’ but it will definitely worsen China-North Korea relations,” Professor Zhu wrote in a recent article in the Straits Times of Singapore. “North Korea’s nuclear test will make the new Xi Jinping administration angry, and give China a headache.”
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. Mr. Xi, who became head of the Communist Party and military council in November, will ascend to the presidency of the country next month.
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.” To improve China’s strained relationship with the United States, Mr. Xi — who has shown himself to be more nationalistic than his predecessor — could start with getting tougher on North Korea, including at the Security Council.
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. The Obama administration excoriated Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, after North Korea’s second nuclear test in 2009, accusing him of “willful blindness” to that country’s actions.
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. “With Hu out of the picture, the administration is intent on determining whether Xi Jinping will prove more attentive to U.S. security concerns,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
After the detonation, the K.C.N.A. news agency said that the test demonstrated that North Korea’s nuclear deterrence 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. “How Xi chooses to respond will be an important early signal of his foreign policy priorities and whether he is ready to cooperate much more openly and fully with Washington and Seoul than his predecessor,” he said, referring to South Korea.
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’s nuclear regulatory body, starting in on Wednesday, and later this month with the six world powers seeking to curb its nuclear program. China’s calculations will be crucial to what happens at the Security Council, where the policy has always been to pursue unanimity over toughness; it is considered far better to get all members on board to send a message to North Korea rather than have China abstain or worse, veto.
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.” In the absence of any real leverage, Washington and its allies are left warning Beijing that if it does not keep North Korea out of the nuclear club, it risks an arms race in its own neighborhood.
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.” President Obama spoke Tuesday morning, hours after the test, with South Korea’s outgoing president, Lee Myung-bak, in what the White House described as an effort to agree on a common strategy at the Security Council and in the two country’s military posture on the Korean Peninsula, where troops have faced off against the North since the armistice was signed 60 years ago.
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 sending a message and giving his successor, Park Geun-hye, the chance to restore relations after the breach a test will undoubtedly cause. A statement issued by the White House after the conversation included a rare reference to American’s “nuclear umbrella” over South Korea, a reminder to the North that an attack on South Korea would be viewed as an attack on the United States. While that has been true for decades, it is rarely highlighted in American statements.
The nuclear test came just weeks after the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for the tightening of sanctions against North Korea for a recent rocket launching, a violation of earlier resolutions prohibiting the country from testing ballistic missile technology. “Threatening a missile-capable warhead with a successful third nuclear test gives the United States, South Korea and Japan good reason to step up their regional ballistic missile defense capabilities,” said Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. “That should give the Chinese government some pause.”
Stung by the promise of stiffer sanctions, the North 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. The United States, meanwhile, faces its own geopolitical calculations. Some experts say it needs to keep up the tough talk, even if it understands that its efforts at the Security Council may not do much to limit the North’s capabilities. Even the strongest sanctions and increasing isolation have not caused the North to back off its nuclear program, which the leadership sees as both a deterrent to American aggression, and which gives the impoverished country’s governing elite a success it can show its suffering people.
The North 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. Now experts say the North may be simply trying to wait the United States out, hoping it will eventually recognize its program as it did Pakistan’s. But experts say Mr. Obama cannot recognize North Korea as the nuclear state it increasingly is without giving signals to Iran — which the West believes is pursuing a nuclear weapon despite its denials — that it could try the same path.
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. Meanwhile, as the world’s powers struggle to refine their policies, North Korea continues to make technological advances. A long-range rocket test in December has been judged by outside experts to have been a success after many failures.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea. Reporting was contributed by Jane Perlez from Beijing, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo, Chris Buckley and Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong, Alan Cowell from Paris, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations and Rick Gladstone from New York.

And Tuesday’s test, if it was as large as originally thought, appears to suggest that the nuclear arms program is also moving ahead. (The first test in 2006 was considered a partial failure.)
“It moves the question of North Korea as a nuclear contender from ‘if’ to ‘when,’ ” said one senior Obama administration official. “The ‘when’ may still be years away, but at least now it is in sight.”

Neil MacFarquhar reported from the United Nations, and Jane Perlez from Beijing. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.