核実験規模最大２０キロ・トン、長崎型原爆に匹敵か
北朝鮮は２５日、朝鮮中央通信を通じて「地下核実験を成功裏に実施した」と発表した。
北朝鮮の核実験は２００６年１０月に続き２回目。韓国青瓦台（大統領府）によると、午前９時５４分、北朝鮮北東部の咸鏡北道
◆０６年の核実験を上回る規模示唆◆
【ソウル＝前田泰広、モスクワ＝浜砂雅一】朝鮮中央通信は「爆発力と操作技術において、新たな高い段階で行われた。実験結果で核兵器の威力をより高め、核技術を発展させる」としており、０６年の核実験を上回る規模であると示唆した。
北朝鮮は、４月の長距離弾道ミサイル発射を非難する国連安保理の議長声明などに反発し、同月２９日、外務省報道官声明で核実験の実施を予告。核問題を巡る６か国協議のボイコットも宣言しており、強硬姿勢を貫くことで米国を交渉に引きずり出す狙いがある。
爆発の規模について韓国の
韓国政府高官によると、北朝鮮は前回同様、核実験実施を米国に事前通報。聯合ニュースは、中国にも事前通報していたと報じた。特に中国へ通報することで、国連安保理での制裁などの動きに加わらないよう誘導する狙いとみられる。
一方、韓国政府関係者によると、北朝鮮は２５日午後、北東部の咸鏡北道
North Korea Announces 2nd Test of Nuclear Device
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea announced on Monday that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test, defying international warnings and dramatically raising the stakes in a global effort to persuade the recalcitrant Communist state to give up its weapons program.
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The headlines on Monday in Seoul focused on the launch.
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The North’s official news agency, KCNA, said, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense in every way as requested by its scientists and technicians.”
The test was safely conducted “on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control,” the agency said. “The results of the test helped satisfactorily settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology.”
The test appeared to have caught South Korea and the United States off guard, and the news hit just as South Korea’s government and people were mourning the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun.
Hours after the test was reported, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified intelligence source in Seoul, said the North had test-fired three short-range, surface-to-air missiles. The three missiles were launched toward the sea between North Korea and Japan and had a range of 80 miles, according to the news agency. They were fired from a base not far from the nuclear test site in northeast North Korea, Yonhap said.
President Obama reacted swiftly to the nuclear test, warning the North to retreat from its defiance of the international community.
“Today, North Korea said that it has conducted a nuclear test in violation of international law,” Mr. Obama said in a statement early Monday. “It appears to also have attempted a short-range missile launch. These actions, while not a surprise given its statements and actions to date, are a matter of grave concern to all nations. North Korea’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile program, constitute a threat to international peace and security.
“By acting in blatant defiance of the United Nations Security Council, North Korea is directly and recklessly challenging the international community. North Korea’s behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in Northeast Asia. Such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation. It will not find international acceptance unless it abandons its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery,” the statement said.
China said it was “resolutely opposed” to the test, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Russia and Japan said the U.N. Security Council would hold an emergency meeting Monday.
Geological authorities in the United States, Japan and South Korea reported that the test triggered an earth tremor with a magnitude of between 4.5 and 5.3. The tremor emanated from Kilju, the same area where the North Korea carried out a test in October 2006.
Kim Sung-han, a security expert at Korea University in Seoul, estimated the test had a power of one kiloton of explosives, slightly more than the 0.8 kiloton detonation reported in 2006. If correct, that would be a fraction of the size of the blasts from American bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945 — themselves considered small by current standards.
But Alexander Drobyshevsky, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, told RIA-Novosti news agency offered a different estimate, saying that the force of the blast was 10 to 20 kilotons.
The test comes amid uncertainty about North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, and increased speculation about who might succeed him. Mr. Kim suffered a stroke last August, which prompted him to step up preparations to transfer power to one of his three known sons. Analysts believe the favorite son is his youngest, Kim Jong-un, who is in his mid-20s.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006, which was considered something of a failure by South Korean and American officials. North Korea had given some advance notice before that test, which, like Monday’s test, also was conducted in the country’s northeast.
Pyongyang had recently threatened to conduct a second nuclear test, citing what it called Washington’s “hostilities.”
If the North’s latest test was more successful, it could mean that North Korea has bolstered its atomic weapons capabilities — and its leverage over the United States, which has sought to denuclearize the North.
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Earlier Monday, North Korea announced that Kim Jong-il had sent a message expressing “profound condolences” to the widow of Mr. Roh, who had pursued a more conciliatory policy toward the North. It remained unclear whether Mr. Kim would send a delegation to Mr. Roh’s funeral on Friday.
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South Korea’s nuclear envoy, Wi Sung-lac, center, and other officers at an emergency meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday.
This undated picture, released by the North Korean official news agency on May 23, shows North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, inspecting an air force unit.
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Relations between the Koreas have deteriorated since Mr. Roh’s successor, Mr. Lee, took office in February 2008, promising to reverse the “sunshine policy” of promoting political reconciliation with Pyongyang with economic aid.
Agreements resulting from a 2007 summit meeting called for the South to spend billions of dollars to help rebuild the impoverished North’s dilapidated infrastructure. Mr. Lee believed that such aid must be linked to improvements in the North’s human rights record and the dismantling of its nuclear facilities.
North Korea has viciously attacked Mr. Lee, calling him a “national traitor,” cutting off official dialogue and reducing traffic across the countries’ heavily armed border.
The new test comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions between North Korea and the United States, which keeps a heavy military presence in South Korea.
Two American journalists are scheduled to be tried June 4 in North Korea, charged with illegal entry into the North and “hostile acts,” and that case in particular has aggravated tensions between Pyongyang and Washington. The relationship was already strained by the North’s test-firing of a long-range rocket on April 5.
After that launch, Washington pressed the United Nations Security Council to tighten sanctions on the North. In retaliation, Pyongyang expelled United Nations nuclear monitors, while threatening to restart a plant that makes weapons-grade plutonium and to conduct a nuclear test.
This month, one day after an American diplomat offered new talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, the North said it had become useless to talk further with the United States.
“The study of the policy pursued by the Obama administration for the past 100 days since its emergence made it clear that the U.S. hostile policy toward the D.P.R.K. remains unchanged,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said, using the initials for the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In comments carried by KCNA, the ministry said: “There is nothing to be gained by sitting down together with a party that continues to view us with hostility.”
The rebuff came as Stephen W. Bosworth, the American special envoy on North Korea, began a trip to Asia with a fresh offer of dialogue. The North’s vow to “bolster its nuclear deterrent” came just hours before Mr. Bosworth was due to arrive in Seoul.
The North’s first nuclear test in 2006 was widely condemned, but it created a new urgency in the six-party talks that had failed to prevent the blast. The parties to the talks are the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
In February 2007, Washington agreed to ease sanctions against banks dealing with Pyongyang, and North Korea concurrently agreed to a process that would lead to the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program. North Korea would receive deliveries of fuel oil in exchange for certain verifications that it was ending its program.
But last December the process collapsed when North Korea rejected the verification measures being sought by the Bush administration.
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