Japan imposes new economic sanctions
South Korean generals during a meeting about North Korea's nuclear weapon test. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the military's alert level was raised in response to the claimed nuclear test.
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea stoked regional tensions today, threatening more nuclear tests and saying additional sanctions imposed on it would be considered an act of war, as nervous neighbors raced to bolster defenses and punish Pyongyang.
South Korea said it was making sure its troops were prepared for atomic warfare, and Japan imposed new economic sanctions to hit the economic lifeline of the communist nation’s 1 million-member military, the world’s fifth-largest.
North Korea, in its first formal statement since Monday’s claimed atomic bomb test, hailed the blast as a success and said attempts by the outside world to penalize North Korea with sanctions would be considered an act of war.
Further pressure will be countered with physical retaliation, the North’s Foreign Ministry warned in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
“If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures,” the statement, said without specifying what those measures could be.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would not attack North Korea, rejecting a suggestion that Pyongyang may feel it needs nuclear weapons to stave off an Iraq-style U.S. invasion.
Rice told CNN that President Bush has told the North Koreans that “there is no intention to invade or attack them. So they have that guarantee. … I don’t know what more they want.”
But she also said that the decision by Pyongyang to go ahead with its nuclear program means it likely will see “international condemnation and international sanctions unlike anything that they have faced before.”
North Korea’s No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam threatened in an interview with a Japanese news agency that there would also be more nuclear tests if Washington continued what he called its “hostile attitude.”
Kim, second to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told Kyodo News agency that further nuclear testing would hinge on U.S. policy toward his communist government.
“The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country,” Kim Yong Nam was quoted as saying when asked whether Pyongyang will conduct more tests.
Along the razor-wired no-man’s-land separating the divided Koreas, communist troops were more boldly trying to provoke their southern counterparts: spitting across the demarcation line, making throat-slashing hand gestures, flashing their middle finger and trying to talk to the troops, said U.S. Army Maj. Jose DeVarona of Fayetteville, N.C.On the streets of North Korea’s capital, it seemed like business as usual. Video by AP Television News showed people milling about Kim II Sung square in Pyongyang and rehearsing a performance for the 80th anniversary of the “Down with Imperialism Union.”
South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said that Seoul could enlarge its conventional arsenal to deal with a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea.
Scientists and other governments have said Monday’s underground test has yet to be confirmed, with some experts saying the blast was significantly smaller than even the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
North Korea appeared to respond to that today, saying in its statement that it “successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions.”