N. Korea threatens nuclear test aimed at United States

January 24, 2013: North Korea today threatened to conduct a test with nuclear weapons "targeting" the United States. The threat comes two days after the UN Security Council, under pressure from the U.S., voted new sanctions against the regime and its experiments. A statement by the Commission for National Defence of North Korea, published today by the official KCNA, said: "We do not hide that the various satellites and long-range rockets we will continue to launch, as well as the high-level nuclear test we will proceed with, are aimed at our arch-enemy, the United States".

Glyn Davis, U.S. envoy to Korea, visiting Seoul, a few minutes before the declaration, had asked Pyongyang to believe the proposal for negotiations by Barack Obama. Davies said he hoped that North Korea would not continue with its experiments with nuclear weapons. " This is not a moment - he added - to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula."

Pyongyang has already carried out underground nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, using plutonium. But the international community thinks that now it is equipped with enriched uranium. At the same time, the Kim regime has developed a missile system that has limited capacity to launch nuclear warheads. According to experts, for now it is impossible that such missiles could reach the United States.

The resolution of the UN Security Council had added six new North Korean entities, including Pyongyang's space agency and a shady body, Hong Kong-based Leader International, to an already existing UN blacklist. Four North Korean officials are also placed on a travel ban. The Council calls on North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme and stop test launches to develop long-range ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.

For Pyongyang, this will not happen. Its launch of the Unha-3 rocket was an historic event. It cost the equivalent of six months of food for 20 million North Koreans who live on less than one dollar a day. The Security Council, the United Nations main peace and security body, voted in favour of the resolution unanimously. China, North Korea's long-time and now only ally, went along indicating that it is no longer willing to cover for the provocations by Kim Jong-un's dictatorial regime.

The sanctions that the UN has placed on North Korea is precisely because of these nuclear and missile tests. The new sanctions decided two days ago follow the launch between December 11 and 12, believed to have been a missile experiment, but Pyongyang claimed it was the launch of weather satellite. In any case, the Ministry of Defence of Seoul believes the North could launch a new nuclear test"at any time". It would be the first under Kim Jong-un's rule, who succeeded his father in December 2011.

Today's threats from Pyongyang target "the United States and the dishonest forces following the U.S." even the UN Security Council, whose latest resolution is "the most dangerous phase of the hostile policy towards the Democratic Republic of North Korea." Huh Moon Youg, director of Seoul's North Korean Studies centre states: "In this totalitarian regime, the dictatorship is maintained not winning the heart of the impoverished population with money, but consolidating it with the exhibition of military force."