Kang Seung-woo is the Business Desk editor at The Korea Times. Prior to this position, he covered politics, national affairs, finance and sports.
Defense minister received prior notice of nuke test
Kim Kwan-jin Defense Minister
By Kang Seung-woo
By Kang Seung-woo
Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said Tuesday that he received prior notice of North Korea’s third nuclear test the day before the blast.
“North Korea informed the United States of its nuclear test yesterday (Monday) and the United States immediately let us know at 10 p.m.,” the minister said at the National Assembly.
Kim, 63, said he received the information from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who had obtained it from the commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command.
“North Korea told the United States that it would conduct a nuclear test as soon as it was ready, and considering it could always be carried out, we were bracing for it,” he said.
The Ministry of National Defense said earlier in the day that the reclusive state exploded a nuclear device, as seismic activity with a magnitude of 4.9 was detected at 11:57 a.m., in Kilju County, North Hamgyeong Province, which is home to the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test complex.
On Tuesday afternoon, the North confirmed that it conducted its third underground nuclear test and said that a smaller and lighter device was used in the “successful” test.
After a seismic event, a sign of a nuclear test, was detected, the alert level for South Korea’s military has been raised from three to two, with one being the highest, but there was no specific movement in the North, the defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said.
The spokesman said that the defense ministry is keeping a watchful eye on the North.
“We are closely watching the North Korean military as it could conduct an additional nuclear test or launch missiles,” said the spokesman.
“South Korea and the United States are on alert and are combining intelligence data.”
In response to the test, the defense minister met with U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim and Gen. James Thurman, commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command to seek measures to deal with the issue.
“South Korea and the United States made it clear that North Korea should take severe responsibility for all consequences caused by its nuclear test,” said a statement released after the meeting.
The spokesman said that North Korea’s third test had a yield of about 6 to 7 kilotons ― comparable to an explosive power of about 6,000 to 7,000 tons of TNT.
According to the defense ministry, the 2006 test had a yield of about 1 kiloton, while the second was roughly 2 to 6 kilotons.
“A yield of 10 kilotons or more is seen as a normal detonation,” said Kim, who revised his earlier announcement that said its destructive power was equal to 10 kilotons.
By comparison, the bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were roughly 16 kilotons and 21 kilotons, respectively, the ministry said.
Gen. Jung Seung-jo, the JCS chairman, said last week that the North was likely to test a “pre-hydrogen” nuclear weapon, or what he called a “boosted fission weapon,” a smaller and more sophisticated nuclear warhead that is small enough to fit on a missile.
However, a military official told Yonhap News that “The destructive power (from the North’s third nuclear test) cannot say it has reached the level.”
A key question about the “self-proclaimed” successful test is what kind of fission material it used _ highly-enriched uranium, enhanced-plutonium, or both _ but the spokesman said that it would take longer to determine which because air samples from the testing location have to be collected.
Pyongyang has conducted nuclear tests twice in 2006 and 2009 and both were plutonium-based.