04 September, 2017
President Trump on Sunday raised the possibility of taking new actions targeting North Korea in the wake of Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.
Scientific American reported at the time that the 5.1-magnitude reading showed the weapon North Korea used was likely a 3.5 to 7-kiloton nuclear weapon (a kiloton is equivalent to about 1,000 tons of TNT).
Pyongyang state media claimed Sunday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un "inspected the loading of a hydrogen bomb into a new intercontinental ballistic missile", according to the Associated Press.
When North Korea tested its last nuclear weapon in January 2016, also claiming it was a hydogen bomb, it measured as a 5.1-magnitude blast. The South's military soon confirmed that it had.
The shockwaves from the underground blast, by far North Korea's most powerful ever, caused tremors that were felt in South Korea and China.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Sunday's nuclear test.
Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff says the drill involved F-15 fighter jets and the country's land-based "Hyunmoo" ballistic missiles and that the released live weapons "accurately struck" a target in the sea off the country's eastern coast. In July, Pyongyang launched an ICBM capable of reaching the United States mainland, and the North responded to Trump's "fire and fury" rhetoric by threatening to fire missiles into the waters around Guam, a U.S. territory that is home to military bases. "I am sure that the UN Security Council will also take necessary measures in a decisive manner", he said.
Trump is meeting with his national security team Sunday afternoon to discuss North Korea.
While the North remains the primary source of regional insecurity, an additional, and perhaps more worrying element of instability is the temperament and thinking of Donald Trump.
"All components of the H-bomb were homemade and all the processes. were put on the Juche basis, thus enabling the country to produce powerful nuclear weapons as many as it wants", KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
On Sunday, Trump reacted to North Korea's claimed explosion of a hydrogen bomb by blasting the isolated state as a "rogue nation" that was "hostile and dangerous" to the United States.
The federal government is upping pressure on countries such as China to cut economic ties with Pyongyang following the powerful test of an advanced hydrogen bomb over the weekend.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed during a phone call "that North Korea has trampled on global law and that the worldwide community must therefore react with determination against this new escalation", the chancellery said in a statement.
While the test is a personal challenge to Trump it is also an act of defiance from Kim towards Beijing.
However, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council Tuesday that "addressing the issues plaguing the (Korean) Peninsula through sanction pressure alone is impossible" because "that path does not propose any options for engaging (North Korea) in constructive negotiations".
India, Pakistan and the Philippines are among many Asian nations condemning North Korea's nuclear test. Peter Hayes, director of Nautilus, a US-based research institute specializing in North Korea, said the test seemed meant to jolt Xi and to convince him that he needed to persuade the USA to talk to North Korea.
His actions are those of a calculating risk-taker (more so than his father Kim Jong-il) intent on thumbing his nose at President Trump, while also bolstering his legitimacy in the eyes of his own people by realising his goal of military modernisation. We just got into a duel with the North Korean chairman, with Kim Jong Un. Xi has real power to affect the calculations in Washington.
