Rico's rants: North Korea’s bomb test

Hannah Beech has an article in Time about the bomb test (maybe) by the North Koreans:

When does an earthquake develop into a full-blown geopolitical tremor? At 1000 on 6 January 2016, seismic activity measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, according to the US Geological Survey, was recorded deep inside North Korea. Two hours later, North Korean state media claimed that the secretive state had tested its first-ever hydrogen bomb. If the landmark test was “successful”, as North Korean television maintained, the detonation would be a major breakthrough for the country’s nuclear-weapons program and a seriously destabilizing force for the region.
Experts believe North Korea has tested four nuclear bombs since 2006, in contravention of international regulations. Before this test, the most recent underground explosion occurred in 2013. That blast, along with the two previous ones, was of an atomic weapon, not the exponentially more devastating hydrogen variety. In December of 2015, North Korea’s youthful leader Kim Jong Un was quoted by the North Korean state news agency as saying that the hermit nation had developed a hydrogen bomb that uses fusion, in addition to fission, to unleash its destructive energy.
At the time, international weapons analysts questioned Kim’s assertion. Notably, the prior atomic tests in North Korea resulted in seismic activity of a similar force as Wednesday’s explosion, rather than a more powerful tremor that might be associated with a hydrogen payload. “I doubt the ability of North Korea to conduct a real hydrogen-bomb test,” says Cai Jian, of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “In the past, they always exaggerated their power.”
Pyongyang’s nuclear experimentation has angered its only political ally, Beijing, which has signed off on UN sanctions punishing North Korea for its weapons program. During the Korean War, an ideologically sympathetic China supplied the North with waves of soldiers; Chairman Mao Zedong’s son even perished during the conflict. Now, however, the relationship has cooled. “Of course, this nuclear test will devastate the relationship with Beijing,” says Zhu Feng, a North Korea expert at Nanjing University in eastern China. “Chinese President Xi Jinping has been pushing very seriously for denuclearization, and this test is a brand new challenge for the entire international community.”
Friday was the birthday of Kim, the scion of a family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since the country divided from the South in the middle of the last century. Although the two Koreas signed a truce in 1953, they are still technically at war. Last year, the two nations traded artillery fire over their border.
Some had hoped that Kim, who studied in Switzerland and once professed a devotion to basketball, would open up his homeland after taking the nation’s reins, following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011. But the heir has purged reformers from his leadership circle, even executing an uncle who had negotiated closer economic relations with China. Late last month, Kim Yang Gon, the North Korean official charged with managing relations with South Korea, died in a supposed car accident. (Several other North Korean cadres have suffered fatal mishaps in recent months. However, the hagiographic treatment reserved for the veteran diplomat in North Korean state media early this month may have meant that this auto crash was just an auto crash.)
Parsing Pyongyang’s message with its recent test is far simpler. North Korea, under the grandson of dictatorial national founder Kim Il Sung, is utterly willing to defy international condemnation. Kim Jong Un’s saber-rattling escalated in December of 2015, when, according to North Korean state media, he claimed that he ruled “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.” A statement issued through the state-run Korean Central News Agency spoke of Pyongyang’s vigilance and resolve to defend itself, in rather more poetic fashion: “Nothing is more foolish than dropping a hunting gun before herds of ferocious wolves,” it read.
Whether the 6 January 2016 explosion was truly of a hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb, will take days of analysis by nuclear experts. The UN Security Council is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the ramifications of the North Korean test. A new round of sanctions will likely follow, with Beijing’s blessing. “If the situation in North Korea gets worse and worse, Japan and America will have more excuses to deploy more military forces near North Korea, which is not good for China,” says Fudan University’s Cai. “So China will give North Korea more pressure, too.”
Meanwhile, on the Chinese side of the border with North Korea, residents are still recovering from the shock of the shaking earth. Wang Weimin, a 38-year-old deliveryman, was asleep in bed in China’s Changbai county when four tremors roused him. At first, he thought it was an earthquake but has now been apprised of the nuclear test conducted not that far across the border. “I wish North Korea would stop doing crazy things,” Wang says. “It’s too dangerous for us.”

Rico says his friend Kelley forwards the text of the official North Korean announcement:
The DPRK government issued the following statement in Pyongyang on 6 January 2016:

There took place a world-startling event to be specially recorded in the national history spanning five thousand years in the exciting period when all service personnel and people of the DPRK are making a giant stride, performing eye-catching miracles, and exploits day by day, after turning out as one in the all-out charge to bring earlier the final victory of the revolutionary cause of Juche, true to the militant appeal of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).
The first H-bomb test was successfully conducted in the DPRK at 1000 on Wednesday, Juche 105 (2016), pursuant to the strategic determination of the WPK.
Through the test was conducted with indigenous wisdom, technology and efforts, the DPRK fully proved that the technological specifications of the newly developed H-bomb for the purpose of test were accurate and scientifically verified the power of smaller H-bomb. It was confirmed that the H-bomb test conducted in a safe and perfect manner, and had no adverse impact on the ecological environment.
The test means a higher stage of the DPRK's development of nuclear force. By succeeding in the H-bomb test in the most perfect manner to be specially recorded in history, the DPRK proudly joined the advanced ranks of nuclear weapons states possessed of even H-bombs, and the Korean people came to demonstrate the spirit of the dignified nation equipped with the most powerful nuclear deterrent.
This test is a measure for self-defense the DPRK has taken to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the US-led hostile forces and to reliably safeguard the peace on the Korean Peninsula and regional security.
Since the appearance of the word hostility in the world there has been no precedent of such deep-rooted, harsh and persistent policy as the hostile policy the US has pursued towards the DPRK.
The US is a gang of cruel robbers which has worked hard to bring even a nuclear disaster to the DPRK, not content with having imposed the thrice-cursed and unheard-of political isolation, economic blockade, and military pressure on it for the mere reason that it has differing ideology and social system and refuses to yield to the former's ambition for aggression.
The Korean Peninsula and its vicinity are turning into the world's biggest hotspot, where a nuclear war may break out, since they have been constantly stormed with all nuclear strike means of the US imperialist aggressor troops, including nuclear carrier strike group and nuclear strategic flying corps.
While kicking up all forms of economic sanctions and conspiratorial "human rights" racket against the DPRK with mobilization of the hostile forces, the US has made desperate efforts to block its building of a thriving nation and improvement of the people's living standard and "bring down its social system".
The DPRK's access to H-bomb of justice, standing against the US, the chieftain of aggression watching for a chance for attack on it with huge nukes of various types, is the legitimate right of a sovereign state for self-defense and a very just step no one can slander. Genuine peace and security cannot be achieved through humiliating solicitation or compromise at the negotiating table.
The present-day grim reality clearly proves once again the immutable truth that one's destiny should be defended by one's own efforts. Nothing is more foolish than dropping a hunting gun before herds of ferocious wolves.
The spectacular success made by the DPRK in the H-bomb test this time is a great deed of history, a historic event of the national significance as it surely guarantees the eternal future of the nation.
The DPRK is a genuine peace-loving state which has made all efforts to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula and security in the region from the US vicious nuclear war scenario.
The DPRK, a responsible nuclear weapons state, will neither be the first to use nuclear weapons nor transfer relevant means and technology under any circumstances, as already declared, as long as the hostile forces for aggression do not encroach upon its sovereignty.
There can neither be suspended nuclear development nor nuclear dismantlement on the part of the DPRK unless the US has rolled back its vicious hostile policy toward the former.
The army and people of the DPRK will steadily escalate its nuclear deterrence of justice both in quality and quantity to reliably guarantee the future of the revolutionary cause of Juche for all ages.
Juche Korea will be prosperous forever as it holds fast to the great WPK's line of simultaneously pushing forward the two fronts.