By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Defense experts say North Korea intended to demand that the world call it a nuclear state by threatening to perform a nuclear test last week unless the U.N. Security Council apologized for imposing sanctions.
Some players have already showed signs of acknowledging the Stalinist state as a de facto nuclear power.
The U.S. Forces Joint Command (JFCOM) listed North Korea as a nuclear power in a document last year, stating, ``There is a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea and Russia in the east.''
The U.S. government issued a clarification regarding the nuclear status of North Korea, stating that this does not reflect U.S. policy.
Despite the denial, concerns of the international community with regard to the North's nuclear status reached a peak here when Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said last month ``the North has nuclear weapons and that is a matter of fact.''
Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at Santa Monica-based think tank RAND Corporation, stressed the term ``nuclear state" implied a grave security consequence.
``If we call North Korea a nuclear power, then there will be a crisis throughout Northeast Asia, a crisis for which, I believe, none of the countries (even North Korea) are prepared,'' he told The Korea Times.
Bennett said nuclear states appear to fit in several different capability categories, including the number of nuclear weapons they possess and the quality of those weapons.
``Low nuclear forces refer to countries such as North Korea that have a few nuclear weapons, basic capabilities,'' he said.