[Kabar-indonesia] Breaking News: NKorea Says Conducted First Nuclear Test [3 reports]

[Joyo at aol.com]

3 reports: 

- North Korea Says It Conducted Successful 
  Nuclear Weapons Test

- NKorean nuclear test to push Japan down 
  military path

- Kim Jong-Il: Dangerous eccentric or 
  shrewd operator?

North Korea Says It Conducted Successful Nuclear Weapons Test

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 8 (AP) -- North Korea said Monday it has performed 
its first-ever nuclear weapons test.

U.S. and South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was 
performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

South Korean intelligence officials said a seismic wave of magnitude-3.58 had 
been detected in North Hamkyung province, according to Yonhap. It said the 
test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju 
city on the northeast coast, citing defense officials.

North Korean scientists "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test 
under secure conditions," the KCNA report said, adding this was "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."

The director of South Korea's monitoring center that is watching for a test 
with sound and seismic detectors declined to immediately comment on the 
reported test.

"We don't know whether it is a nuclear test or not," an official at the 
earthquake center at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources said 
on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the issue.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity in North 
Korea, although it was not clear whether a blast would be strong enough for 
its sensors.

The North said last week it would conduct a test, sparking regional concern 
and frantic diplomatic efforts aimed at dissuading Pyongyang from such a move. 
North Korea has long claimed to have nuclear weapons, but had never before 
performed a known test to prove its arsenal.

"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to our military 
and people," KCNA said. "The nuclear test will contribute to maintaining peace 
and stability in the Korean peninsula and surrounding region."

On Sunday night, U.S. government officials said a wide range of agencies were 
looking into the report of the nuclear test, which officials were taking 
seriously.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has convened a meeting of security 
advisers over the issue, Yonhap reported, and intelligence over the test has been 
exchanged between concerned countries.

Kyodo News agency reported that the Japanese government has set up a 
taskforce in response to reports of the test.

The North has refused for a year to attend international talks aimed at 
persuading it to disarm. The country pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Treaty in 2003 after U.S. officials accused it of a secret nuclear program, 
allegedly violating an earlier nuclear pact between Washington and Pyongyang.

Speculation over a possible North Korean test arose earlier this year after 
U.S. and Japanese reports cited suspicious activity at a suspected underground 
test site.

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Agence France-Presse
October 9, 2006

NKorean nuclear test to push Japan down military path

North Korea's announcement that it has tested a nuclear bomb is set to push 
Japan to expand its own military and stir debate on what was once the ultimate 
taboo of developing atomic weapons itself.

The test comes as Japan gradually expands its defense posture, 60 years after 
it was defeated in World War II and forced by the United States to renounce 
the right to a military.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office just two weeks ago, is a sworn 
hawk on North Korea who has long supported a larger role for Japan's military 
alongside its ally the United States.

Analysts expect North Korea's test to boost the hand of Abe, who wants to 
rewrite the pacifist 1947 constitution and allow Japanese troops to engage in 
overseas operations alongside allies.

Despite its pacifism and US guarantees to protect Japan, the country now has 
around 240,000 troops on active duty and an annual military budget of 4.81 
trillion yen (41.6 billion dollars).

A draft new constitution would preserve Japan's official pacifism but 
acknowledge it has a military -- not the "Self-Defense Forces" as it is now known.

Japan has already been taking a larger international military role. It sent a 
small but symbolic reconstruction mission to Iraq, the first time since World 
War II that Tokyo has deployed in a country where fighting is underway.

Japan is also believed to be capable of assembling nuclear weapons if it 
makes the political decision.

But it would be a drastic change of policy for Japan, the only nation to 
suffer nuclear attack, which has long campaigned to eliminate atomic weapons.

More than 210,000 people were killed in the 1945 US atomic bombings that 
flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"I can't reject the possibility that a nuclear deterrent system would be 
developed in the region," said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a professor of international 
politics at Aoyama Gakuin University.

"Even if the North's missiles do not reach the United States, they could 
easily put Japan in the firing range and destroy it," he said.

Former prime minister Eisaku Sato proposed developing nuclear weapons in the 
1960s as China built the bomb. But his position was rejected by the United 
States, which provides a security umbrella over Japan.

More recently, a magazine this year quoted Foreign Minister Taro Aso as 
telling US Vice President Dick Cheney that Japan would need atomic weapons if North 
Korea pursued a nuclear program. Aso's aides denied the report.

Most Japanese support some revision to the constitution. But the country is 
sharply devided on how far to deviate from official pacifism.

A recent study by a US House of Representatives committee on intelligence 
said that Japan -- and also South Korea and Taiwan -- could be driven to pursue 
nuclear weapons if North Korea tests an atomic bomb.

------------------------------------

Agence France-Presse
October 9, 2006

Kim Jong-Il: Dangerous eccentric or shrewd operator?

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, whose regime has said it has launched its 
first-ever nuclear test, may be ridiculed by Western cartoonists but he is a 
shrewd and ruthless political operator who sees nuclear firepower as the key to 
his regime's survival, experts say.

"This is not a crazy or deluded man," Michael Breen, a commentator and author 
on North Korea, told AFP earlier this year. "He has shown how shrewd he can 
be."

Some analysts have suggested the nuclear test may be an attempt to jolt the 
US back into direct talks and to ease financial sanctions, although others 
believe the move may be internally driven.

"They could feel the need to rally the public," said Peter Beck of the 
International Crisis Group, after North Korea announced its plans for a test.

"There is the possibility of famine returning this winter if international 
assistance is not maintained. It may be a way of rallying people at a time when 
they are having to tighten their belts."

Yet there is a persistent perception of Kim, 64, as a hard-drinking playboy 
and film buff with a 20,0000-strong movie collection.

"The myth in the outside world is of this totally weird playboy. The real man 
is politically very shrewd. He has that North Korean skill of playing a weak 
hand well," said Breen.

Kim's image at home is also skewed. Through propaganda he is worshipped by 
most North Koreans despite decades of hardship and a mid-90s famine that left 
hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, dead.

"He is a god-like figure to the people," said Yu Suk-Ryul, a North Korean 
expert in Seoul. "What he wants is what North Korea gets."

According to at least one defector, what the Dear Leader wants is a nuclear 
missile that can strike the United States in the belief that the superpower 
would then no longer interfere with his regime.

"I don't think he is prepared to give up his nuclear weapons," said Breen.

"That would require him to trust the United States and South Korea. We may 
have to live with a nuclear North Korea for a while."

The diminutive Kim, dubbed a "pygmy" by US President George W. Bush, grew up 
as the pampered first son of North Korea's founding father Kim Il-Sung.

North Korea's propaganda has transformed the two Kims into mythical figures 
with vast personality cults.

When the son was born on February 16, 1942, a bright star and double rainbows 
appeared over his birthplace at Mount Paekdu, a sacred mountain, according to 
Pyongyang.

Independent experts say Kim was actually born in Russia at a guerrilla camp 
near Khabarovsk where his father was based while conducting warfare against 
Japanese forces who had colonised the Korean peninsula.

After graduating from Kim Il-Sung University in 1964, Kim began his climb to 
the top through the ranks of the Korean Worker's Party.

His role apparently included planning terrorist attacks, including the 1983 
bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 South Koreans and the 1987 bombing of a 
Korean Airlines jet that killed all 115 people on board.

According to a senior South Korean official, Kim also pulled the strings 
during 1994 negotiations to resolve a nuclear crisis concerning a plutonium 
producing plant at Yongbyon.

In return for freezing that programme, he extracted a promise for the 
construction of two light-water nuclear reactors and, until the reactors were 
completed, annual shipments of 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil.

That project was officially scrapped earlier this year amid a renewed 
stand-off over North Korea's weapons programme.

Kim waited three years after his father's death in 1994 before taking over 
leadership of the ruling party.

He then promoted a process of gradual engagement with the outside world, 
culminating in a historic summit in Pyongyang in June 2000 with the then South 
Korean President Kim Dae-Jung. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright 
visited Pyongyang later that year.

"He didn't appear to be a cold-minded theoretician but a very sensitive 
personality who had a sharp mind," Kim Dae-Jung was quoted as saying after their 
meeting.

High hopes of rapprochement faded after the nuclear crisis resurfaced in 
2002, when the US accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment 
programme in violation of the 1994 deal.

Fuel shipments were suspended and in 2003 the North announced it had 
withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- setting the stage for the 
current confrontation.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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