International reaction to North Korean nuclear test
Here is an excerpt from the article by my colleague Justin McCurry, which rounds up the latest developments on the Korean peninsula.
South Korea has carried out a simulated attack on North Korea’s nuclear test site in a huge show of force in response to Pyongyang’s detonation of what it claims is a hydrogen bomb.
Seoul has also approved the complete deployment of a US anti-missile system in another sign that it intends to address North Korean provocations with reminders of its own military firepower, while keeping the door open to dialogue.
South Korean intelligence officials said there were indications that the North was preparing to test fire another ballistic missile, though they did not say when they believed the launches would take place.
The army and air force drills, held at an undisclosed location on Monday morning, involved launching ballistic missiles in a simulated strike against North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site – the scene of Sunday’s controlled detonation of what Pyongyang claimed was a powerful hydrogen bomb capable of being loaded on to an intercontinental ballistic missile.
We’re going to pause our live coverage now, so I recommend you read that article in full:
China’s foreign ministry has rejected Donald Trump’s tweeted threat to stop trading “with any country doing business with North Korea” as unfair and unacceptable.
Asked about Trump’s threat, the foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, told reporters:
We cannot accept a situation in which, on the one hand we work to resolve this issue peacefully, but on the other China’s own interests are subjected to sanctions and are damaged. This is neither objective, nor is it fair.
Asked about the timing of Sunday’s test - which came just hours before the start of the Brics summit in China - Geng said:
Whenever North Korea conducts a nuclear test, it goes against the will of the international community and China will strongly oppose it.
Asked about the risk of radioactive material being carried over the border into China, Geng said:
The Chinese government attaches high importance to protecting the safety of Chinese citizens and the environment in the [border] region... China will take relevant measures to safeguard Chinese citizens and the environment.
And, when asked about military cooperation between the US and South Korea, Geng replied:
We hope all the involved parties are able to maintain their restraint and keep calm and can make joint efforts to return to the track of peace talks. We hope the relevant parties will work with China towards the same end.
According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, this is the statement put out by Brics leaders about North Korea this afternoon in China, where the emerging nations’ annual summit is being held:
We express deep concern over the ongoing tension and prolonged nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula and emphasise that it should only be settled through peaceful means and direct dialogue of all the parties concerned.
The Brics countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Some more from the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, who has been trying to ease tensions over North Korea’s nuclear tests. Speaking to reporters at a summit of the emerging nations, referred to as Brics, he said:
Those who are stronger and smarter should show restraint. Any clumsy step could lead to an explosion.
International reaction to North Korea’s nuclear test has not been uniform. While the US has talked up a military response, other world powers have emphasised different approaches.
Russia has offered perhaps the most direct opposition to Washington’s stance, with the country’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, saying Moscow believes the only way forward is by political and diplomatic means.
He sought to tone down the rhetoric, saying the situation in North Korea was not a real nuclear threat to Russia.
According to Reuters, he joined China in expressing opposition to the deployment of the US’s Thaad missile defence system in South Korea. Beijing believes it threatens its national security.
Russia would respond to such a military buildup on its borders, Ryabkov said, adding that all options were on the table and talks between Moscow and Washington were needed.
He made clear that he condemned the North Korean tests and stressed the importance of dialogue with the country. He criticised the US’s willingness to issue sanctions, though he indicated that Russia could yet make a decision to impose the same.
China’s foreign ministry said it had lodged “solemn representations” with the North Korean embassy in Beijing.
According to Agence France-Presse, the ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said:
China opposes the DPRK in carrying out nuclear missile development and we are committed to denuclearisation of the peninsula. This position is well-known and the DPRK also knows this position perfectly well.
China upheld talks with North Korea, to which Geng Shuang referred by its acronym, as the means to resolve the issue, it was said.
The South Korean government has released more details about its decision to complete the deployment of a US missile defence system designed to intercept incoming North Korean missiles.
The last four of six terminal high-altitude area defence (Thaad) batteries will become fully operational after the environment ministry on Monday gave its consent to their installation in Seongju, a village in central South Korea where two batteries are already in operation.
A defence ministry survey of the site concluded that Thaad’s impact on the surrounding environment and community would be minimal, saying that electromagnetic radiation from the system’s powerful X-band radar and noise pollution would remain below safety levels set by the government. Villagers had protested against Thaad’s initial deployment in April, claiming it would damage their crops and health.
The additional deployment, which will reportedly begin later this week, will not be without conditions, however. The ministry requires regular radiation assessments that must be observed by residents, and for the result to be made public, according to the Yonhap news agency.
South Korea and the US agreed in 2016 to install the missile defence system to counter the growing threat from North Korean missiles.
China has angrily denounced Thaad as a threat to its own national security, while residents of Seongju say the missile batteries, installed on a golf course, have turned their village into a North Korean target.
South Korea will temporarily deploy four remaining launchers for a missile defence system after the completion of an environmental assessment by the government, the country’s defence ministry said on Monday.
Some construction would be carried out to deploy the launchers for the terminal high-altitude area defence (Thaad) system at a site in Seongju, south of Seoul, according to Reuters.
There are currently two launchers at the location, which is a former golf course. The defence ministry did not specify when the launchers would be moved there.
The deployment decision was reportedly made by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in.
China strongly objects to the use of the missile defence system, saying its powerful radar can penetrate deep into its territory, undermining its security.
The South Korean defence minister, Song Young-moo, has said the country’s president and government officials are in agreement that their response to North Korea’s recent tests should be to strengthen the South Korean military, rather than to hold talks, according to the Reuters news agency.
South Korea expects more missile launches from North
South Korea’s defence ministry is still seeing signs that North Korea plans to stage more ballistic missile launches, possibly including an intercontinental ballistic missile, it said in a parliament hearing on Monday.
Chang Kyung-soo, a defence ministry official, said:
We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The defence ministry was called by parliament on Monday to answer questions about North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear test, which was carried out a day earlier.
The Yonhap news agency reports that Seoul’s defence ministry also measures North Korea’s nuclear test at 50 kilotons. The detonation on Sunday was the strongest ever from the North, which claimed the test was of a hydrogen bomb.
South Korea’s military has conducted a show of force, simulating an attack on Kim Jong-un’s nuclear test site, Punggye-ri, a day after the regime held its sixth and largest nuclear test. It involved live-fire exercises using its Hyunmoo ballistic missiles, F-15K fighter jets and troops on the ground at undisclosed locations on its east coast. It plans more exercises jointly with the US.
Seoul is poised to approve further deployments of a controversial US missile defence system. China has said the Thaad system is a threat to its own national security. Many in the South are calling for the country to develop its own nuclear deterrent independent of the US.
The United Nations security council is set to hold an emergency meeting on Monday morning. Nations around the world condemned the test.
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has pledged to do his utmost to increase the country’s missile defences. He spoke after he and South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, held a 20-minute talk on the phone and agreed to pursue stronger UN sanctions to draw North Korea to the negotiating table.
The White House responded to North Korea’s nuclear test with a sharp warning by defense secretary James Mattis that “any threat” against any US territory “or our allies will be met with a massive military response.”
China’s president, Xi Jinping, did not mention the crisis at the Brics summit today, and Chinese media joined him in downplaying tensions. The Communist party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, carried just one line on its front page. China is furious, but has few options, experts say.
Asked whether the United States would attack North Korea, Donald Trump said, “we’ll see.” Video here. Trump earlier turned on South Korea, tweeting: “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”
The test reflects the failure of Trump’s bellicose rhetoric on North Korea, the Guardian’s Julian Borger writes.
Trump earlier spoke to Shinzo Abe and “confirmed the two countries’ ironclad mutual defence commitments,” the White House said.
Theresa May condemned the test as “reckless”, saying it is more pressing than ever to look at increasing the pace of implementing sanctions on the regime.
North Korea’s claim that it had tested a hydrogen bomb was not implausible. The test caused an earthquake of magnitude 6.3. Read about the test.
If you’re just starting your day now, here is a wrap of the main developments out of South Korea from our Tokyo correspondent, Justin McCurry. I will also post a summary of the wider situation shortly.
Experts and commentators in South Korea have been calling for Seoul to gain its own nuclear deterrent independent of the US, our Hong Kong correspondent, Benjamin Haas, writes.
South Korea hosts about 30,000 US troops and falls under the US nuclear umbrella, but in return is banned from building its own nuclear weapons under an agreement struck in 1974.
“As nuclear weapons are being churned out above our heads, we can’t always rely on the US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence,” the Dong-a Ilbo, South Korea’s second-largest newspaper, said in an editorial.
The US stationed atomic weapons in the South after the 1950-53 Korean War, but withdrew them in 1991 when North and South Korea jointly declared they would make the peninsula nuclear-free.
The editorial said that agreement no longer applied. “There is no reason for us to cling onto the declaration when it has come to mean the denuclearisation of South Korea, not the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” it said.
At the Brics summit in Xiamen, south-east China, state media cut off its transmission of world leaders after Xi Jinping had spoken but Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, did get to speak about North Korea on Twitter:
He said: “Another question that concerns us are the recent North Korean tests. Brazil reaffirms its commitment to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
Outra questão que nos preocupa são os recentes testes norte-coreanos. O Brasil reitera compromisso c/ a não proliferação de armas nucleares.
Kim Jong-un’s latest provocation – which some believe was deliberately timed to upstage the start of the annual Brics summit in China – exposes not only the scale of the North Korean challenge now facing Chinese president Xi Jinping but also the dearth of options.
“The Chinese are pissed off, quite frankly,” says Steve Tsang, the head of the Soas China Institute. “But there is nothing much they will actually do about it. Words? UN statements and all that? Yes. But what can the Chinese actually do?”
One option is to further tighten sanctions on Kim’s regime by targeting its exports of textiles and clothing, says Zhao Tong from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. Xi could also deprive Kim of another key source of revenue by agreeing to limit or completely prohibit up to 100,000 North Korean labourers from working overseas, including in China.
A third and far more drastic option also exists: cutting off North Korea’s crude oil supply. Zhao doubts Xi will choose that path. He believes turning off the taps could prove an irreversible decision since the pipeline delivering oil to North Korea is old and would corrode and break if left unused.
Crucially, though, it would cripple North Korea’s economy, almost certainly bring down Kim’s regime and create a massive refugee and security crisis just a few hundred miles from Beijing.
The Nikkei is now off nearly 1% as the market takes fright at the higher yen. The rise in the currency makes Japanese goods more expensive abroad, hurting the big electronics and car exporters listed on the stock market.
However, the reaction of the markets is reasonably calm given the rapid escalation in tensions over recent weeks.
One explanation came from Rob Carnell, head of Asian research for ING, who even saw an upside for investors. “Like a bad horror movie, the North Korea saga intersperses moments of calm, with occasional action to jolt you out of your chair.
“But we have been here now many, many times. Unless this is the precursor to US military action, which we doubt, then in a little over a day or two, tensions will calm again, making this a good buying opportunity for investors with a strong enough nerve.”
China’s front pages on Monday joined the president in downplaying the tensions, seeking instead to focus on the issues facing a summit. The Communist party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, carried just one line about the crisis, beneath a photograph of Xi welcoming Russian president Vladimir Putin.
(L-R) Brazil’s President Michel Temer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pose for a group photo during the Brics summit in China. Photograph: Kenzaburo Fukuhara/AFP/Getty Images
More detail from Justin McCurry on Shinzo Abe’s phone call with Moon Jae-in.
Abe told Moon that Sunday’s nuclear test was “a head-on challenge to the international community”, Kyodo news agency quoted the Japanese deputy chief cabinet secretary, Yasutoshi Nishimura, as saying.
Abe said the international community should bring the “strongest possible pressure” to bear on Pyongyang, including additional sanctions, and that Japan would urge China and Russia to do more.
In turn, Moon said South Korea would work with the security council, and vowed to maintain a strong bilateral security alliance with the US. His comments came after Donald Trump chastised South Korea for pursuing “appeasement” towards the North, although Moon has consistently supported the use of military and economic pressure, while leaving the door open to talks.
