Global condemnation as North Korea claims H-bomb

Stocks in Asia retreated and the South Korean won slumped over 1% against the US dollar.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Despite singling out the of USA, it’s the United Nations Security Council that’s actually applied sanctions for much of the past decade and today with the unanimous support of Russian Federation and China is looking at taking further measures.

Following a closed-door, emergency session, the U.N. Security Council called the test “a clear violation” of the council’s resolutions.

What would a confirmed test mean to the region?

In the United States, Republican presidential candidates seized on the test to accuse President Barack Obama of running a “feckless” foreign policy that enabled North Korea to bolster its nuclear arms capabilities.

The North is thought to have conducted three previous underground nuclear tests there since 2006.

Secretary of State John Kerry repeated on Wednesday the US stance that it will never accept North Korea as a nuclear state.

Wednesday’s purported hydrogen bomb test will intensify pressure on China to tighten the screws on Kim.

The explosion drew criticism, including from China and Russian Federation.

Atlantic Council analyst Robert Manning said China likely views North Korea’s latest test as a “huge kick in the teeth”, considering it has come at a time when Beijing has been trying to fix frayed relations with Pyongyang.

North Koreans watch a news broadcast on a video screen outside…

Lee Cheol-woo, a member of the intelligence committee of the South Korean National Assembly, said his country’s National Intelligence Service had estimated that the explosive yield from the test was equivalent to 6 kilotons of TNT.

First, despite strong condemnation by Abe, Japan has very little bilateral leverage over North Korea with which to influence Pyongyang’s behavior.

While the Kim government boasts of its military might to project strength globally, it also plays up the need to defend itself from external threats as a way to maintain control domestically.

“The Iran nuclear deal, they might think, means that Iran is getting a couple million in payoffs”.

Nuclear experts and the South Korean military saying that the size of the blast was consistent with an atomic explosion, not an enormous hydrogen bomb.

North Korea also said it was capable of miniaturising the H-bomb, in theory allowing it to be placed on a missile and potentially posing a new threat to the U.S. West Coast, South Korea and Japan. The latest test occurred in the same geographical location, with the same geological profile, as earlier tests. The initiative fell apart over the ensuing months, followed by years of unpredictable talk and behavior, during which North Korea has tested missiles repeatedly, provoking neighbors such as South Korea and the West.

Wednesday morning, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, creating an artificial quake of around 5.1 magnitude.

North Koreans watch a news broadcast on a video screen outside Pyongyang Railway Station in Pyongyang, North Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016.

North America correspondent Michael Vincent reports.

“North Korea is not as broadly developed as, let’s say, India”, Heisbourg added. “If they throw that arrow, there will be confusion”, he stated.

Republican lawmakers called for a new approach to North Korea. There’s so much that we don’t know.

“North Korea continues to be one of the most isolated nations in the world and their isolation has only deepened as they have sought to engage in increasingly provocative acts”, he said.

Soon after the ground shook around its nuclear testing facility, North Korea trumpeted its first hydrogen bomb test – a self-proclaimed “H-bomb of justice” that would mark a major and unanticipated advance for its still-limited nuclear arsenal.

Where atomic bombs level neighbourhoods, hydrogen bombs take out metropolitan area.