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North Korea claims nuclear test

Wang

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21 Apr 2004
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North Korea claims nuclear test

POSTED: 3:27 a.m. EDT, October 9, 2006

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea claimed it conducted a successful underground nuclear test Monday, according to the country's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

China, a close ally of North Korea, denounced the claimed test as "brazen" and South Korea said it would respond "sternly." The United States said a test would constitute a "provocative act."

The apparent nuclear test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (1:36 a.m. GMT) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing defense officials.

South Korea's share market dropped almost 3 percent after the first reports of the apparent test before closing 2.4 percent lower. Japan's market was closed Monday for a public holiday (Full story).

Reports of the claimed test triggered global condemnation (Full story).

A spokesman for South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun said Seoul would "sternly respond" and the Defense Ministry raised the military alert level.

"The field of scientific research in the DPRK (North Korea's official name) 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," KCNA reported.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow responded to the reports in a conference call with reporters.

"U.S. and South Korean intelligence detected a seismic event Sunday at a suspected nuclear test site. North Korea has claimed it conducted an underground nuclear test," Snow said.

"A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in northeast Asia," Snow added.

A senior U.S. official said China was given a 20-minute warning ahead of the test and in turn passed the information along to the United States, Japan and South Korea.

A U.S. military official told CNN that "something clearly has happened," but the Pentagon was working to fully confirm the report.

Other senior U.S. officials said they also believed the test took place, citing seismic data that appears to show one.

Senior U.S. officials said the United States is consulting with allies around the world and would push for sanctions Monday at a 9:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. GMT) meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York.

You can read the rest here.


I don't know if it's true, but if it is then it's bad for the region. Not sure if sanctions would do much. Japan may produce nuclear weapons too.
 
The news is true. An earth shock was felt in Korea of 3.5. China officially disapproved the test, S-Korea stopped their help to N-Korea today, and a lot of more stuff is going to happen the next couple of days!!

Waiting for Abe his official response.
 
Associated Press reports,
North Korea Wants Congratulations​
United Nations - The U.N. Security Council

U.N. Security Council should congratulate North Korea for its nuclear test instead of passing "useless" resolutions or statements, North Korea's U.N. ambassador said Monday.

The council was holding a meeting about the test, and several diplomats warned of tough measures, possibly including the threat of sanctions.

"It will be better for the Security Council of the United Nations to congratulate the DPRK scientists and researchers instead of doing such notorious, useless and rigorous resolutions or whatever," Pak said, referring to the North by its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.

"The nuclear test in the DPRK will greatly contribute in increasing the world deterrence of the DPRK" and will contribute "to the maintenance and guarantee of peace and security in the peninsula and the region," he said.
They might want congratulations with some fireworks dropped to Pyongyang.
 
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Lets try to avoid a thermo-nuclear war. It might be bad for the environment and all kinds of living things.
 
The news is true. An earth shock was felt in Korea of 3.5. China officially disapproved the test, S-Korea stopped their help to N-Korea today, and a lot of more stuff is going to happen the next couple of days!!
Waiting for Abe his official response.
These are the government responses, but I heard some reports too a lot of South Koreans are secretly not so displeased, that this has sparked a great welling up of national pride and they can understand the North's need for it...And anyway, after reunification it's going to give the entire penninsula much greater international leverage than it has now. I wonder how serious they can be this ? ☝

Like sabro said, I just hope we make it that far.
 
Majority Koreans silently support continue success in nuclear development for the peninsula,N Korea's aim is Japan.
 
ricecake said:
Majority Koreans silently support continue success in nuclear development for the peninsula,N Korea's aim is Japan.
It was a few hours before the Roh-Abe summit when Kim announced the success of an underground explosion test, then this is what happened at the meeting:

ROK President Discusses Wartime Atrocities with Abe, Refuses Issue of Joint Statement
Roh refused Abe's request to issue a joint statement condemning North Korea for its alleged nuclear test, according to the sources. The South Korean leader then talked for 40 minutes about his views on the history of Japan's atrocities during World War II and visits by Japanese politicians to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
 
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Roh or Kimuchi-jins wouldn't have refused a joint statement if it was " Proclamation of Japanese and Kimuchi-jins are ONE BLOOD " whatever that means,a pathetic cure for bitter stubborn Koreans' severe case of deep-seated inferiority complex.
 
Roh or Kimuchi-jins wouldn't have refused a joint statement if it was " Proclamation of Japanese and Kimuchi-jins are ONE BLOOD " whatever that means,a pathetic cure for bitter stubborn Koreans' severe case of deep-seated inferiority complex.

Kimuchi-jins ??? :eek:
 
So when will Japan join the nuclear club??? China has it and sooner or later Korea will have it. Russia, India and Pakistan have it. What is Japan waiting for? Will Asia become the next middle east region for conflicts? Let's not kid ourselves everything is not sweet music amongst Asian nations...

The USA being the bully is preferrable to Russia China or anyone else that is supposed to be the next great nation. With USA we can expect things whereas China Russia ,etc already don't care about democracy and human rights and are not as ethnically or culturally diverse so you will get even worse discrimination... the grass is definitely not greener on the other side...
 
8TH LD: U.N. Security Council adopts N. Korea sanction resolution unanimously

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution unanimously Saturday against North Korea over its claimed nuclear test, expressing "the gravest concern" and calling for all U.N. members to take wide-ranging economic and diplomatic sanctions.

It is the first time the Security Council has adopted a sanctions resolution against North Korea since the country joined the United Nations in 1991.

North Korea, however, totally rejected the resolution, calling it "unjustifiable." In July, Pyongyang also "totally rejected" a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning its launches of ballistic missiles.

"It is gangster-like for the Security Council to have adopted today a coercive resolution while neglecting the nuclear threat and moves for sanctions and pressure of the U.S. against the DPRK," said North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Pak Kil Yon during open consultations at the full council.

Read all
 
rant on a nuclear north

I hope you all do not 'yell' at me for making such a long
feeble attempt at trying to look like i am saying something.


Albert Einstein's statement that "there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world."
begins Norman Solomon's column

He then points out that
Nuclear weapons can't be controlled by saying, in effect, "Do as we say, not as we do."
And points out the US hypocracy in its own development of a new generation of "usable" 'bunker-buster' nukes.


Much of what Crazy Russian says I agree with and is pretty well documented
(see Chomsky or several ex-CIA such as John Stockwell, Phil Agee, Ralph McGehee, or the National Security Archive ), it's just that you gotta dig a little.
EXCEPT, I do not agree with his "eliminate the cause, i.e. the USA."

2) As Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy points out in
"An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire", there is no way to take on the American empire militarily. She tries to discuss other ways.

1) as with war in Iraq for regime change (not WMD as the Bush administration stated), hundreds of thousands innocents would lose their lives.
war is archaic. 'war is a racket' (as USMarine Smedley Butler pointed out).
war only brings more war and as Plato states, "only the dead who have seen the end of war窶? Survivors live lives with wounds both physically and psychologically. Not to mention ex-soldiers' children who might have to deal with the damage done to their parent.


There are many people saying that what the invasion of Iraq taught the world 'is that to NOT have nuclear weapons is to risk invasion from the US.'
Because the US does not invade nuclear nations.
The documentary Preventive Warriors (available streaming online at this site) discusses the policy of invading another country because of what we think you might be thinking about doing in the future. Chalmers Johnson of the Japan Policy Research Institute states in the video that that policy "puts the rest of the world on notice that 'we're coming'"


One thing I happened to notice in coverage the past week, is the lack of reporting of what South Koreans think about all this.

This article from December 2002 (and in other media) describe South Koreans' views at that time.
S. Koreans Shrug Off Nuclear Threat - Many believe the U.S. poses a bigger danger than the communist North.

Johnson, noted above, in one of his recent writings (sorry don't remember which), wrote that the then incoming South Korean president reportedly told the Bush administration that they would rather live with a nuclear North than follow the US into another war on the penninsula.


C-SPAN & C-SPAN2 had live coverage of forums on the detonation. One was a group of right-wing/conservative "think tanks" such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, among others, that seemed overly concerned about "the alliance" (between the US & SKorea). As if that were more important than South Korean self-determination (or perhaps [Korean] lives?).
-the forum on the other C-SPAN I found to be...I do not remember any person's organization's name, but it seemed less so that they would apply the black&white term "evil".



North Korea is a human rights abusing dictatorship and now it has the nuke.
Same with Pakistan. Let's not be hypocritical here. or anything.

It is interesting, as I read just today, that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists did NOT adjust their Doomsday Clock (statement) just yet.

Then their are US ambassadors to the UN,
John Bolton has said,
"There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.''

Madeline Albright has said,
窶徼he UN is a tool of American foreign policy.窶

The book Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN (2000) shows how this stuff goes beyond George Bush's foreign policy and beyond NKorea acquiring a nuke.


So is a nuclear North Korea really a threat to world peace?

It has been suggested that there should be cultural experts working on foreign policy, not just security experts. Bruce Cumings is one who knows a great deal about Korea in "Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History" Updated Edition. One I'll be reading soon just for the fun of it.


After all that ranting nonsense,
Albert Einstein said
"You Cannot Simultaneously Prevent And Prepare For War".
 
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i have being fallowing this topic and i think they are working so hard to get nuclear weapons to draw attention to themselve. they need economical help and so this is a bets way to bargone for it. i think its wrong that they had to do this because they shoudl get economical help, but their governmen afraid they will loose the power and people do not like to loo power.

hahaha hi russians :D its good to see you and to read some russian, its being a while since i had.
 
Sorry, there was a request for a certain off-topic post to be deleted, but that wouldn't work without getting rid of the rest of the off-topic posts, so quite a few had to go.
 
NKorea has a nuke.
The bigger problem is that there are more nukes and continue to be nukes at all.
That is much worse than NKorea having a nuke, outside the view of how the US corporate media presents the world.

imo, US foreign policy was horrendous before Bush got into office.
It just got much worse to the Nth degree. In truth, they just dropped all sorts of P.R. that previous administrations had used and are doing it rather in your face. Iran/Contra and the unconstitutional & illegal terrorist war (quite accurate description) the US conducted in Nicaragua in the 80s being just one previous example.



author here says the "Framework Agreement" was in fact working for 8 years.


http://www.democracynow.org/article..../10/11/1430219
Explain what that Framework Agreement was.

BRUCE CUMINGS: Well, it was an agreement that came after a very dire threat of war in 1994 that froze their entire plutonium facility at Yongbyon in North Korea. They had seals on the doors, closed-circuit television, and at least two UN inspectors on the ground, 24/7, all the time. So there isn't any possibility of that agreement having failed. It held for eight years and denied North Korea the plutonium that would have allowed them to make more bombs. Senator McCain is engaged in some sort of demagoguery here, because I don't know a single expert who would say that that Framework Agreement was not successful, at least for eight years, in keeping North Korea's plutonium facility shutdown.

Now, the enriched uranium program is not even clearly a program for a bomb. It may be to enrich uranium for light-water reactors that were expected to have been built by the United States and its allies. But even if it is for a bomb, it's much more difficult to enrich uranium to a weapons grade and create a uranium bomb than it is to create a plutonium bomb, plus they already have now, thanks to the Bush administration's policies, the wherewithal for six to eight plutonium bombs, so in effect they don't even need the other program.

People say North Korea cheated. Wow, isn't that really terrible? Kim Jong-il cheated. I don't know anyone who thinks that Kim Jong-il is a person who can be trusted, but I do know that North Korea kept that agreement made in 1994 and the U.S. did not. We pledged ourselves to normalize relations with North Korea. We didn't do that. We pledged ourselves to build light-water reactors. They got started in 2002. So when you actually look at that agreement between country X and country Y, rather than the endlessly demonized North Korean regime, you see that we are responsible, as well as the North Koreans, for the current situation.

But as far as Senator McCain is concerned, he is just flat wrong. It's not a partisan question. It's a question of knowing what that agreement was and whether it was carried out or not.


(take what i say with a bucket of salt.
don't leave MikeCash!)
 
Thank you for the posts ---,


Originally Posted by Hiroyuki Nagashima
As for the Korean, both the north and the south are the same.
---Yes, and the US already knows that.
I am almost certain US citizens do not know that.
News in the US, CNN, nightly network news, rarely ever gives us something
like the opinions of SKoreans. On the rare occasion they would it be just telling us a US administration sees X and they view it as bad. But things are usually in crisis mode by the time anything like that happens.
Isn't Korea basically an unresolved civil war, and that's why they see N&S as the same? Not that they want to continue war.


---
"South Korea as Kim's ATM" article in the Christian Science Monitor
also seemed to think the alliance between SKorea & the US is more important than SKorean sovereignty. The current regime in dc certainly has put its claim of sovereignty above the concerns of those it has been allied with in the past.

---
Just today I picked up Bruce Cumings "Korea's Place in the Sun, A Modern History" and read just the intro to this 2005 edition.
Cumings pointed out that the 'rise in anti-americanism' isn't just from Bush & co.
But also from after the 1998 Asian economic melt-down, high US officials apparently were quite instrumental in trying to get SKorea to refashion their economic model.


---
"Historical Amnesia" Hurts Korea-US Alliance: Clinton (Hillary)
The "historical amnesia" she is refering to is of SKoreans.
What?!? Last time I checked, people outside the US, including in very poor
areas of the world, have a way better historical memory than the average US citizen OR the US press.

Basically Clinton is saying the exact same things that the supporters of the war in Iraq have been saying to Europeans for not falling in step with them.
"we saved you from hitler you ingrates".
So....anybody who thinks the Democrats are different from the Republicans on foreign policy, here's at least one very evident example of them not being so. (you can look into East Timor history and the lack of justice for 24years of attrocities for another. that's probably the most day-glow example)

She said both countries should seek to understand each other and recognize the importance of their alliance.
There's that alliance again...much more important than SKorean sovereignty apparently.
I agree with the first part. We who grew up in the US need to find out more about Korea (and lots of other places in the world too. remember the joke : war is god's way of teaching americans geography).


---
It might be interesting to note (or not), Chalmers Johnson in 'Sorrows of Empire' has said that the regional military commanders are the 'de facto authors of US foreign policy'.
I don't know what that would mean on the Korean penninsula. Hopefully not war.
 
The DRPK have a crazy dictator, but the US is too busy now in Iraq, and may have trouble looming in Iran or A-stan so don't really have much desire to deal with North Korea
Some news from
chinapost.com.tw
'North Korean group warns on inspections'
U.S. inspections of North Korean ships in international waters could violate an armistice between the two countries and spark a war, the spokesman for a North Korean group in Japan said Thursday.
So Chung On, director of the International Affairs Bureau of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, said Pyongyang had no problem with inspections of its ships within a country's territorial waters.
"But if the U.S. tries to inspect our country's ship in the public sea, that will cause a serious matter," he said in English to reporters.
 
Damm.Thanks to China and Pakistan now NK too had Nukes. :unsure:

Pakistan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and P-11 centrifuges to North Korea. He also provided North Korea with a flow meter, some special oils for centrifuges, and coaching on centrifuge technology.
The Pakistan Nuclear Scientist Khan network did supply uranium-enrichment technology to North Korea. In Pakistan, sensitive nuclear designs and materials, including heavy equipment such as 6-ft.-tall metal cylinders, could not have been carried out of the Khan Laboratories premises to an airport and then by a military plane to Pyongyang without the government's knowledge or complicity. At least 18 tons of material was reportedly transported during the 1990s.
 
I wonder if Khan wasn't actually working for the US, maybe CIA or something.
ha. jokes.
Although the CIA has done some gawd-aweful things on the orders of US presidents in its unconstitutional history.
John Stockwell tells us a little bit from Angola in In Search of Enemies
 
Associated Press reports,
Korean Nukes Linked to Japanese Pinball​
by Carl Freire

Gambling at pachinko was a lot more fun for Reiko Kuzuhara until she began to wonder whether maybe - just maybe - her losses were helping North Korea build nuclear weapons.

Pachinko, a form of pinball deeply loved in Japan, is an industry run by ethnic Koreans, and experts have long believed that the revenues are a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished regime in North Korea.

Now, as Kim Jong Il's nuclear weapons program gathers pace, Japan's attitude is hardening, and that includes shutting out the ferry on which money is believed to be hand-carried from Japan to North Korea.

"I really don't like that the money I spend could be helping them with those sorts of things," said Kuzuhara, 55, who works in the printing industry and was interviewed on a Tokyo street near several pachinko parlors. "It's making me think twice and cut back on how often I play."

The pachinko connection is facing increased scrutiny as tensions rise following North Korea's ballistic missile tests in July and its first test of a nuclear device on Oct. 9.

Pachinko is an upright pinball game played at tens of thousands of brightly lit parlors across the country. Success is measured in little steel payoff balls, which can be exchanged for cash or other prizes.

The machines rake in over $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea. Official figures put the sum of remittances from sources in Japan at $25.5 million, but the bookkeeping is murky and some think the sum is closer to $850 million a year. No one knows how much of it derives directly from pachinko.

"It's very difficult to say how much cash is actually going from Japan to the North," said Toshio Miyatsuka, a North Korea specialist at Yamanashi Gakuin University in central Japan who has written a book about the pachinko industry.

"But it does seem certain that a lot of it is winding up in the hands of the North Korean government and military, and that includes money earned from drugs and pachinko," he added.

The Ministry of Finance only requires sums going to North Korea to be reported if they top $2.55 million in wire transfers or $85,120 in hand-delivered cash.

Japanese government records show that of $25.5 million sent from Japan to North Korea during the 2005 fiscal year, more than 90 percent was hand-delivered.

The banning of the Mangyongbong ferry from Japanese ports in July has almost certainly put a crimp in the cash flow.

Government officials, however, say it's hard to track money delivered through third countries, in person or through bank accounts. Cash from the drug trade traveling through Japan's underworld is likewise hard to monitor.

Officials in the pachinko industry say North Korea's image problems and the sanctions have not been a business issue.

While ethnic Koreans may worry about how relatives in the North are faring without the cash they used to take to them, their main concerns as businessmen lie elsewhere.

"Yes, there are a lot of ethnic Korean operators, but the industry is not at all concerned about the sanctions issue," said Takaaki Sasaki, spokesman for Zennichiyuren, an industry organization. "We're not hearing about anyone losing business because of the missiles or the nuclear test."

Still, the connection between pinball revenues and North Korea makes some Japanese pachinko players uneasy.

"I used to play frequently, but I don't go so often anymore," Kuzuhara said. "I really don't want North Korea using my money for bombs."
 
I think too much media attention is directed towards North Korea, I think we shouldn't even take them very seriously, I mean I don't think anyone is crazy enough to use nuclear missiles as weapon anymore.
 
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