North Korea Claims Successful Hydrogen Bomb Test

North Korea nuclear test feared after earthquake detected – live

South Korea calls national security meeting after earthquake of magnitude 6.3 detected near a North Korean testing area

Melissa Davey

Sunday 3 September 2017 06.04 BST

This is Nicola Slawson and I’ll be continuing to update you on the latest news from North Korea throughout the morning.

Here’s the full text of the statement from North Korea on its hydrogen bomb test, which Jonathan Cheng of the Wall Street Journal has posted on Twitter: 

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Jonathan Cheng 

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Full statement from N. Korea on today's nuclear test.

3:48 PM - Sep 3, 2017

Latest test has yield of up to 100 kilotons

South Korean news agency Yonhap News has just filed this report:

North Korea’s apparent sixth nuclear test was estimated to have a yield of up to 100 kilotons, about four to five times stronger than the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, the chief of the parliament’s defence committee said Sunday.

Citing a report from the military authorities, Kim Young-woo said that the explosive power of the apparent nuke tested Sunday appeared to be much stronger than the North’s fifth one estimated to have a yield of 10 kilotons. One kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT.

“(The North’s latest test) is estimated to have a yield of up to 100 kilotons, though it is a provisional report,” Kim of the minor opposition Bareun Party told Yonhap News Agency over the phone. “The test will be a very crucial political and strategic inflexion point.”
Kim also pointed out the need for the Moon Jae-in administration to make a decision over whether to stick to its peace initiative that seeks to re-engage with the belligerent state through both sanctions and dialogue.

Earlier in the day, the South’s weather agency detected a magnitude 5.7 earthquake from the North’s Pyunggye-ri nuclear test site in a sign of another strategic provocation. South Korean intelligence authorities have said that Pyongyang appears ready for another nuke test.

Pyongyang carried out nuke experiments in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2016.

At a doorstop in Sydney, Australia, the deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, has called conflict on the Korean peninsula “the greatest threat to peace and stability in our region”.

“It is absolutely vital that we continue to see pressure from the international community to support peace and de-escalation of conflict on the Korean peninsula. Right across our region governments have been watching North Korea’s actions with a great deal of concern and trepidation.”

Asked about North Korea’s claim it is capable of fitting a hydrogen bomb to an intercontinental ballistic missile, Plibersek said it was “very difficult to know how much of the North Korean regime’s propaganda is true” and said that reports differed on the likelihood of that claim being true.

“What we know for certain is that the North Korean regime is behaving irresponsibly, aggressively and in a way that threatens peace and security in our region ... [and] that the people most likely to influence with the North Korean regime is China and we continue to urge China to do all it can to urge the North Korean regime to stand down.”