North Korea May Have Carried Out a Nuclear Test

As United States and Japan continue to lobby for the new UN draft resolution on Saturday morning, which would place a series of military economic restrictions upon the Asian country for having carried out a nuclear test at the beginning of this week and thus, defied the international community, US intelligence officials confirmed to a great extent North Korea's claim with regard to a nuclear test.

The only main element for the scientific approval of such a fact is the great amount of radioactivity detected in a series of environmental samples, which is consistent with a nuclear blast. These had been gathered by an American military airplane and displayed the existence of a radioactive area above the Sea of Japan. However, officials highlighted that a series of additional scientific analyses needs to be performed in order to be sure of the truthfulness of North Korea's claim. "The intelligence community continues to analyze the data", the spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick Jones stated.

He added that even though nuclear experts believe that a partial plutonium implosion had occurred, one less than a kiloton, which would be far smaller than the 23 kiloton one the United States dropped on Japan during the Second World War, they cannot prove it for the time being. However, the partial plutonium implosion hypothesis may mean in turn that some of the plutonium failed to implode and thus may be picked up from the environmental samples. As far as this aspect of the issue is concerned, on the rhetorical level, North Korea announced that the alleged test it carried was successful.

Meanwhile, the new UN draft resolution draws closer to a vote on Saturday, yet it seems that it is also nearing a new dispute, created by Russia on Friday, given the latter highlighted that the document does not specifically define the weapons-related goods department that would be placed under an embargo, as the resolution stipulates.

On the other hand, China, supported by Russia, urged that the United States make clearer references within the document in order to provide assurances that such a document does not include any military intervention upon North Korean ships found in international waters.