Russia Sees North Korea Detonating Nuke Device Within Days

Rare Alignment On May 20th MegaQuake Syzygy

April 26, 2012

An anonymous Russian defense official told Kyodo News on Wednesday his government has increased its threat alert as there is a chance North Korea will detonate a third nuclear test device within the next seven days (see GSN, April 25).

Voicing his opposition to a new nuclear blast at a politically sensitive time for Moscow, the Russian Far East-based official said there is evidence to believe an underground detonation is in the works.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is to begin his latest term as president on May 7. The Russian city of Vladivostok in September is to host a top-level meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The city is roughly 62 miles from the North Korean boundary line (Kyodo News I, April 25).

A desire for a military success following the failure of an April 13 rocket flight is seen as a leading reason for any decision by Pyongyang to carry out a nuclear test, Bloomberg reported. The long-range Unha 3 rocket broke apart within minutes of liftoff, producing a major embarrassment for the government under young leader Kim Jong Un.

The North could expect to come under further condemnation by the international community should it detonate another nuclear device. Just last week, the U.N. Security Council, notably including China, unanimously approved a statement that “strongly” condemned the Unha 3 launch.

“It could happen any day now,” said Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright.

Albright’s Washington-based think tank has analyzed recent satellite photographs of North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site that show a great deal of activity around a new tunnel that would be expected to be used in a follow-up to the nation’s previous underground blasts.

Kim would “look more powerful and successful” following an atomic blast, according to Albright. “He needs this to keep the military feeling secure and the elites energized, and it certainly scares the South Koreans. North Korea knows that well.”

Albright also noted Pyongyang’s track record of following military testing failures with nuclear detonations. When North Korea’s 2006 and 2009 long-range missile launches both fizzled, the regime sought to reassert its military prowess with atomic tests.

“There’s a pattern, when something doesn’t work right that’s fundamental to their view of nuclear deterrence, they can get very reactive and you see that now,” the ISIS head said (Nicole Gaouette, Bloomberg, April 26).

London-based North Korea observer Mark Fitzpatrick said, “Having failed on the missile, they’ve got to do something that goes boom,” the Christian Science Monitor reported.

The North’s two previous atomic tests “did not go very well,” he said.

While Pyongyang was able to detonate the plutonium-powered devices both times, their resulting small yield did not impress international specialists (Donald Kirk, Christian Science Monitor, April 25).

A new nuclear trial could also be seen as a “perfectly rational act, Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean studies specialists at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Bloomberg. Three years have passed since the North’s most recent test.

Devices set off in 2006 and 2009 were powered by plutonium; the North holds six to 18 nuclear devices — all loaded with roughly 6.6 pounds of the fissile material, according to ISIS assessments.

The North in an upcoming attempt might encircle a plutonium core with highly enriched uranium to produce a significantly greater explosive yield, Albright said. Pyongyang has also indicated its interest in producing a thermonuclear weapon.

Should the test not go as planned, “they can still say ‘look, we’re on the path to thermonuclear weapons,’” Albright said.

Possible dates of an upcoming nuclear test could include May 28, which is Memorial Day in the United States. The North used the U.S. holiday for its 2009 blast.

“You’re thinking that’s too predictable, but they are predictable,” the Tufts expert said. “When American officials are enjoying a little break, or preoccupied, they like to pull officials back into the office.”

Pyongyang might also look to detonate the device on June 25, the anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, or the anniversary of the inking of the armistice that suspended the conflict on July 27, 1953, Lee said (Gaouette, Bloomberg).

Separately, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea have all presented their own rosters of new North Korean entities to be added to the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions list, the Korea Herald reported on Wednesday.

In issuing its presidential statement last week condemning the North’s rocket attempt, the Security Council called for a council committee with oversight on North Korean sanctions to study adding new individuals and institutions to the list of blackballed entities.

“We basically support the list that the U.S. has submitted — which is more than 10 North Korean entities. On top of that, we added more than 10 North Korean entities,” an unidentified South Korean government official told the Herald without specifying which firms were under consideration for blackballing (Kim Yoon-mi, Korea Herald, April 25).

South Korean presidential Senior Secretary Km Tae-hyo is in Washington this week for discussions on matters including North Korea, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

Kim is meeting with officials from the Defense and State departments as well as White House national security adviser Tom Donilon, according to an anonymous government source,

Kim is “in consultations with U.S. officials on the North Korean nuclear program, missiles, North Korea policy and other major pending [bilateral] issues,” the source said (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency I, April 25).

At the same time, the two longtime allies are on Thursday to begin their first meeting of the Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue in Washington, Yonhap reported.

South Korean Deputy Defense Minister Lim Kwan-bin and U.S. Principal Deputy Defense Undersecretary for Policy James Miller are leading the discussions.

“The two-day meeting is to coordinate and control major alliance issues at a high level and discuss joint guidelines,” a South Korean defense source said (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency II, April 25).

Meanwhile, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba on Wednesday called for Russia, China, South Korea, the United States, and Japan to all work together to pressure the North from carrying out an atomic test or other hostile actions, Kyodo reported (Kyodo News II, April 25).http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/russia-sees-north-korea-detonating-nuke-device-within-days/