How Should the US Respond to North Korea's Nuclear Testing?

North Korea Nuclear Test: Hydrogen Bomb 'Missile-ready' - BBC News

North Korea says it has successfully tested a nuclear weapon that could be loaded onto a long-range missile.

The secretive communist state said its sixth nuclear test was a "perfect success", hours after seismologists had detected an earth tremor.

Pyongyang said it had tested a hydrogen bomb - a device many times more powerful than an atomic bomb.

Analysts say the claims should be treated with caution, but its nuclear capability is clearly advancing.

North Korea last carried out a nuclear test in September 2016. It has defied UN sanctions and international pressure to develop nuclear weapons and to test missiles which could potentially reach the mainland US.

South Korean officials said the latest test took place in Kilju County, where the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site is situated.

Inside Story - Should North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions Concern the World?

North Korea says threat of more sanctions is "laughable" after it holds its fifth and biggest nuclear test.Presenter: Adrian FinighanGuests:Victor Gao - director of the China National Association of International StudiesDaniel Pinkston - lecturer of international relations at Troy UniversityJim Walsh - research associate at MIT's Security Studies Programme.

China 'Firmly Opposes' North Korean Nuclear Test

North Korea Carries Out Fifth Nuclear Test

North Korea's latest underground nuclear test has been met with international condemnation.

Its neighbour, South Korea, has called its behaviour an act of 'maniacal recklessness'.

The test is the largest explosion created by Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme so far.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett reports from Seoul.

North Korea Agrees to Stop Nuclear Tests

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The United States said on Wednesday that North Korea has agreed to halt its nuclear programme and allow back UN inspectors, in a surprise breakthrough soon after the communist state's veteran leader died.

Welcoming the progress, President Barack Obama's administration said it would move ahead on a long-mulled plan to deliver 240,000 metric tons of food aid to the impoverished state which suffered a major famine in the 1990s.

But the agreement, reached after talks last week in Beijing, is certain to be met with scepticism in many quarters as North Korea has repeatedly agreed to end its nuclear programme only to renounce agreements when tensions rise.

"The United States still has profound concerns regarding North Korean behaviour across a wide range of areas, but today's announcement reflects important, if limited, progress in addressing some of these," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. » | AFP | Wednesday, February 29, 2012

North Korea Will Pay the Price for Nuclear Tests, Says US
ANGER: American ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said North Korea would be “further debilitated". Photo courtesy of the Daily Express
DAILY EXPRESS: NORTH Korea will “pay a price” for its nuclear missiles tests, the American ambassador to the UN warned last night.

Susan Rice said international pressure on the country would ­increase until it realised the tests had left it “further isolated and further debilitated”.

She told a US television news channel that Pyongyang’s actions were “clearly provocative and destabilising actions which threaten international peace and security”.

She said the international ­community would not “throw up our hands and let them pursue this path”, adding: “North Korea needs to understand that its ­actions have consequences.” >>> By Mark Reynolds | Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Deranged Dictator
Kim Jong Il – the deranged dictator. Photo courtesy of the Daily Express
DAILY EXPRESS: He is the ultimate renaissance man, superlatively gifted at everything he attempts. He has composed six operas and his genius at staging musicals makes an Andrew Lloyd Webber production look like amateur dramatics in your village hall.

When playing golf, he regularly shoots a hole-in-one three or four times in a single round and he personally designed his country’s most symbolic monument, the Juche Tower. No wonder his countrymen worship him.

Or he is an irredeemably flawed individual who cannot distinguish between fact and fiction, a tyrant who rules by fear and punishes ruthlessly any hint of dissent. No wonder his countrymen worship him.

If you thought Britain suffered under the manipulative skills of Alastair Campbell, then spare a thought for the poor benighted souls of North Korea living under the rule of the man they are obliged to call their “Dear Leader”: Kim Jong Il.

This is a man who, even when his people were reduced to eating grass because there was nothing else, still managed to convince them there wasn’t a famine raging through the country and that it was an ugly rumour cooked up by pro-Western agitators – or, as we know them, the Red Cross and the United Nations World Programme, the relief agencies who saved more than a fifth of the North Korean population from dying of starvation and disease in the Nineties. Meanwhile, he had his favourite dish, lobster, flown in every day, eating it with silver chopsticks.

For the past five years, Kim Jong Il has even succeeded in keeping the outside world guessing as to whether he is still alive or not; rumours persist that he died in 2003 and that since then foreign leaders have been ­dealing with one of four lookalikes.

It has been all too easy for the West to scorn Kim Jong Il as something of a figure of fun, a vain playboy in built‑up shoes presiding over all those eerily robotic mass rallies before retiring to watch the American action films he adores.

But North Korea’s nuclear tests this week are a sharp reminder of Kim Jong Il’s other side as arguably the most dangerous man in the world at the moment.

“Know thine enemy” is sage advice but when it comes to Kim Jong Il, the West is hamstrung by the paucity of fact and the abundance of fable. >>> By Anna Pukas | Wednesday, May 27, 2009

THE GUARDIAN: Photo Gallery: Kim Jong-il: a life in pictures >>>