• English Site
• > SPIEGEL Blog

Pyongyang Goes Atomic

North Korea Claims Nuclear Test a "Success"

North Korea says it has successfully tested a nuclear weapon. World leaders from Washington to Beijing are condemning the announcement, even if experts still need to confirm that an underground explosion on Sunday was really an atomic blast.

North Korea rattled governments around the world with its announcement on Monday morning that it had tested a nuclear weapon, in what an official statement called "a great leap forward" for the tiny Communist regime.

If it's true, North Korea would be the eighth nation in the world to admit to detonating a nuclear weapon. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully "with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent," and that no radiation leaked from the test site. But other countries were still trying to determine on Monday whether the shocks detected in North Korea's northern Hamgyong province came from a nuclear blast.

Senior officials in the US government said they had no immediate reason to doubt the announcement, and leaders from around the world -- China, Pakistan, Britain, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, among others -- condemned the tests. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier echoed those concerns when he said on Monday that "today's nuclear test endangers peace and security in the region and beyond. United Nations Security Council is now called on to counter this North Korean provocation with a determined reaction."

Clearly something rattled the ground in North Korea. The US Geological Survey said it recorded a seismic tremor focused in northern Hamgyong with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 -- which experts said would indicate an explosive strength of about 550 tons of TNT. That's half a kiloton, far smaller than the nuclear bombs dropped by America on Japan during World War II. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the destructive power of about 15 kilotons.

Some experts cautioned that North Korea could try to fake an explosion by setting off conventional weapons, and South Korea said it was still trying to detect escaped radiation near the site. A top Russian military officer, though, said Russian monitoring systems had "detected the test of a nuclear weapon in North Korea … It is 100 percent (certain) that it was an underground nuclear explosion."

Balance of Power

A successful nuclear test by North Korea would alter the balance of power in eastern Asia. The only other nations with an admitted nuclear capability are America, Russia, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, and North Korea's closest ally, China. Israel is suspected of having nuclear weapons but has never admitted to conducting a test.

Even if North Korea does possess a working nuclear weapon, though -- which its government has claimed since 2005 -- some experts doubt whether Pyongyang can really threaten other nations by mounting a warhead on an accurate missile. The bigger fear is that it will try to sell nuclear technology. North Korea is an impoverished, isolated nation which has been known to raise money by selling missiles to Iran, Syria, and Pakistan.

Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a nuclear research center in California, said the North Koreans might call even a small or flubbed test a "success."

"It would not be totally surprising if it was a fizzle and they said it was a success because they learned something," Coyle told the New York Times. "We did that sometimes. "We had a missile defense test not so long ago that failed, but the Pentagon said it was a success because they learned something, which I agree with. Failures can teach you a lot."

msm/ap