North Korea has been threatening to test a nuclear weapon recently, and may have done so a couple of hours ago.
The test is “unconfirmed” at the moment, but South Korea says it detected seismic activity measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale at 0136GMT, or 10:36AM Korea local time. The presumed test site is underground, in a coal mine in Gilju.
It’s surprising to me that, given the advance warning, there isn’t an official confirmation that there was a nuclear test or not. There’s probably no shortage of equipment set up to monitor the situation, and I would expect a different signature for a nuclear explosion than from setting off a huge pile of RDX at the bottom of a mine.
There’s no shortage of countries that could build nuclear weapons if they wanted. South Korea and Japan in particular come to mind at the moment. More problematic would be Kim Jong-Il making a deal with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or someone similar) to trade oil and hard currency for nuclear weapons technology.
