From Beijing to Washington, world leaders weighed their difficult options Monday for responding to claims by North Korea that it had conducted an underground test of a nuclear weapon, with the U.S. proposing severe sanctions against the isolated communist nation.
As the government of President Kim Jong Il faced almost unanimous condemnation for the test–including from North Korea’s main ally and economic backer, China–the United Nations Security Council demanded that it refrain from further tests, return to stalled negotiations and end its weapons program.
The Bush administration circulated a draft UN resolution late Monday that would ban North Korean ships and aircraft from other countries, prohibit all trade in military and luxury goods with Kim’s government, prevent its “abuses” of the international financial system for the development of banned weapons, and impose travel restrictions on North Korean officials.
President Bush condemned the reported underground blast, saying he had consulted with the leaders of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
“All of us agreed that the proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council,” Bush said.
The president also issued a warning to Kim’s government, which is known to have sold missile technology to Pakistan and Iran, among other nations.
“The transfer of nuclear weapons to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States,” Bush said. “And we would hold North Korea fully accountable to the consequences of such action.”
The test took place at 10:36 a.m. Monday (8:36 p.m. Sunday Chicago time), according to South Korea. U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, informed Bush of the test and monitored it late into the night, according to White House spokesman Tony Snow.
Despite North Korea’s claims, the U.S. and other nations were still trying to confirm that the blast in North Korea’s North Hamgyong province was indeed a nuclear device. Some doubts lingered over how large or successful the reported test was, and what it means for how close North Korea is to being a nuclear threat.
A Russian official said seismic monitoring equipment recorded an underground blast equivalent to 5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT–about the force of the 1945 bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. South Korea said its equipment measured a far smaller explosion, equal to about 500 tons of TNT.
A blast the size of the one recorded by South Korea could be achieved by a large cluster of non-nuclear explosives, experts said.
Nevertheless, North Korea wasted little time in claiming that it had successfully completed its first nuclear test, which would place it in an exclusive club with seven other nations that have confirmed nuclear weapons programs: the U.S., Russia, Britain, China, France, Pakistan and India. Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear arms but has never confirmed it.
The international community faces challenges in fashioning a response that would contain North Korea’s nuclear capability and check the transfer of nuclear material or technology to other nations or even terrorist groups.
Many fear the test could radically alter the security situation in Northeast Asia, not only along the tense border between North and South Korea, which still technically are at war, but also in Japan and beyond.
Analysts said Japan might feel most threatened by North Korea’s potential nuclear weapons program, which could lead the island nation to abandon some of its pacifist post-World War II policies and strengthen its military. Others fear the test could lead to a wider arms race in the region, with Japan and South Korea ultimately seeking their own nuclear weapons.
“The development and possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea will in a major way transform the security environment in North Asia and we will be entering a new, dangerous nuclear age,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Seoul after meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun.
U.S., Chinese and other officials also will have to re-evaluate their diplomacy. The Bush administration faces demands from critics that it return to bilateral talks with Kim’s government, a strategy pursued by the Clinton administration but later rejected by President Bush, who included North Korea in “the axis of evil.”
Many believed that China, due to its close relationship with North Korea and its crucial financial aid to its nearly famished neighbor, had enough leverage to keep Kim’s ambitions in check. The test may force the Chinese to recalculate their strategy.
North Korea “defied the universal opposition of international society and flagrantly conducted the nuclear test,” China’s government said.
Only Iran, which faces its own standoff with the West over its nuclear program, appeared to defend the North Korean test, calling it “a reaction to America’s threats and humiliation.”
Few were considering a military response Monday, and Defense Department officials declined to discuss military options.
“There certainly is a large amount of [U.S. military] capability in that region,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “But this is an international problem, not a U.S. problem. It will be addressed with other countries, with our allies.”
Military options could include a naval blockade or quarantine, as it was referred to during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, to prevent the import or transfer of nuclear weapons or technology.
Another option would be air strikes targeting North Korean nuclear sites, but the effectiveness of any such strikes is uncertain. Some sites may be well-protected or concealed underground or in mountains.
Air strikes also run the risk of provoking a conventional North Korean military response along the tense border with South Korea. North Korea maintains a military force of more than 1 million troops and 10,000 artillery tubes capable of raining hundreds of thousands of shells on Seoul in the first hours of a war.
On the other side of a narrow demilitarized zone, South Korea has a force of more than 650,000 troops, along with about 30,000 U.S. troops posted along the North-South boundary.
While Bush has refused direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea, some experts say the U.S. now has little to lose now by holding direct discussions with Pyongyang.
“One possibility could be that having demonstrated that they now have the capacity to detonate a nuclear device successfully, the North Koreans would be prepared to sit down and make some concessionary moves,” said Lawrence Scheinman, an arms-control negotiator during the Clinton administration who now teaches at the Monterey Institute in Washington.
“By giving up their ace card they now have nothing left to play,” Scheinman said.
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About Kim Jong Il
Age: 64
In power since: 1994, inheriting leadership from his father, Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea.
Family: Believed to have had three wives and to have fathered a child with each of them.
Military: Controls 1.1 million troops, the world’s fifth-largest army.
Official nicknames: “Dear Leader” and “Guardian of Our Planet.”
Appearance: 5 foot, 3 inches tall and 187 pounds; wears platform shoes and a bouffant hairstyle to appear taller; often wears khaki jumpsuits and sunglasses.
Interest in films: Said to own about 20,000 foreign movies, his favorite being “The Godfather.”
Cult of personality: North Korea’s government has attempted to burnish his biography by claiming that a double rainbow appeared when he was born and that in his first attempt at playing golf, he shot 11 holes-in-one.
— Tribune news services
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shedges@tribune.com
