Q.What, precisely, did North Korea announce?
A. The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea said that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb — its aboriginal — at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
“This analysis is a admeasurement for aegis the D.P.R.K. has taken to durably assure the ascendancy of the country and the basal appropriate of the nation from the ever-growing nuclear bribery and bribery by the U.S.-led adverse armament and to anxiously aegis the accord on the Korean Peninsula and bounded security,” it said.
Q.How is a hydrogen bomb altered from an diminutive bomb?
A. A hydrogen bomb — aswell accepted as a thermonuclear bomb — combines hydrogen isotopes beneath acutely top temperatures to anatomy helium, in a activity accepted as nuclear fusion. It is added able than a accepted diminutive weapon: It uses the activity appear from the aggregate of two ablaze diminutive nuclei, while an diminutive bomb uses the activity appear if a abundant diminutive basis splits, a activity accepted as nuclear fission. American scientists developed the hydrogen bomb, which was aboriginal activated in 1952.
Q.How can North Korea’s affirmation be verified?
A. Governments and scientists are alive to see if North Korea’s affirmation is true.
The United States Geological Survey appear that it detected a consequence 5.1 seismic accident in the northeastern allotment of North Korea, area the analysis is said to accept occurred — almost agnate to what happened in 2013, if North Korea activated an diminutive bomb. But a South Korean lawmaker, Lee Cheol-woo, said that his country’s intelligence account estimated the accident triggered an diminutive crop of six kilotons and a consequence 4.8 accident — abate than the 7.9 kilotons and consequence 4.9 appear afterwards the 2013 test.
A acknowledged hydrogen bomb analysis would about accept an diminutive crop of tens of kilotons.
Q.What if it was not a hydrogen bomb?
A. If Mr. Kim appear in December that his country had assuredly developed the technology to body a thermonuclear weapon, experts were skeptical. Some said that North Korea ability be advancing to analysis a “boosted fission weapon,” added able than a acceptable diminutive bomb. Designers can calmly access the annihilative ability of an diminutive bomb by putting at its bulk a baby bulk of tritium, a radioactive anatomy of hydrogen. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency appear that the government in Seoul was aptitude adjoin the approach of a additional fission weapon, “once akin away from a hydrogen bomb.”
Q.How abounding times has North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon?
A. This appears to be the fourth time. North Korea conducted underground nuclear tests on Oct. 9, 2006; May 25, 2009; and Feb. 12, 2013.
Q. What ability North Korea be aggravating to achieve with its threats?
A. In the past, United States administrations and South Korean governments managed to charge down alternate acute tensions with North Korea by alms concessions, including much-needed aid, in acknowledgment for the North’s able to end its nuclear weapons programs. Abounding analysts accept that North Korea is afresh gluttonous aid and added concessions, while some advance that it alone wants to be accustomed as a nuclear state, like Pakistan.
Still others advance that the North absolutely fears an advance by the United States or South Korea and angle the warnings as deterrence. Highlighting a perceived bribery from away is aswell a admired apparatus the North Korean government uses to ensure centralized accord in an bankrupt country that has accomplished astronomic privation, including adverse dearth and continuing common hunger.
Q.Could North Korea advance the United States?
A. Maybe. In 2012, North Korea launched a rocket that put its aboriginal digital into apogee — adopting the achievability of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could ability North America. The United Nations Aegis Council accursed the barrage as a abuse of several Aegis Council resolutions and anchored sanctions adjoin it.
Q. How ability the United States, China, Japan and South Korea acknowledge to a missile analysis or an attack?
A. If a missile advance went into the water, even if it anesthetized over Japan, the two countries could avoid it. But if it headed for land, the United States would apparently use its missile interception technology, including on Aegis-equipped ships off the Korean coast. If there were to be a added absolute attack, like the abate that sank a South Korean warship in 2010, it is acceptable that both the United States and South Korea would respond. China would be beneath acceptable to yield action.
Q.What was the all-around acknowledgment to antecedent North Korean rocket launchings?
A. As the North’s missile technology has become added sophisticated, the ablution of longer-range missiles has evoked added all-embracing concern.
In 1998, if the North launched a Taepodong that flew over Japan, Japan briefly cut off its accession adjoin a North Korean activity project. But in July 2006, if the North launched accession all-embracing missile, assorted countries began arty sanctions, while the United Nations Aegis Council began abacus to bread-and-butter sanctions.
In April 2009, if the North’s efforts to barrage a three-stage Unha-2 rocket failed, the Aegis Council said it would strengthen castigating measures. It did so afterwards the North conducted a nuclear analysis the next month.
In April 2012, the United States canceled planned aliment aid if the North approved to barrage a added avant-garde missile, the Unha-3. That ablution failed, but accession in December succeeded in appropriation a baby digital into orbit. The Aegis Council anchored sanctions yet again. Afterwards the North’s nuclear analysis in February 2012, China, the North’s longtime protector, alternate in autograph aching new sanctions aimed at North Korean banking, barter and travel.
Q.What is the Obama administration’s action on North Korea?
A. The Obama administering adopted a action of “strategic patience” in 2009, beneath which absolute negotiations or offers of aid to Pyongyang are withheld unless the North Korea administering shows “positive, effective behavior” and alertness to accommodate over the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.
The action is a acknowledgment to the American acceptance that the United States had absurdly offered aid, generally in the deathwatch of Pyongyang’s provocations, or addled agreements with the North on which the North afterwards reneged. Strategic patience, in the words of Robert M. Gates, the above aegis secretary, grew out of a admiration not “to buy the aforementioned horse twice.”
Critics say that while the action has accustomed the United States to acclimate assorted circuit of acerbity by Kim Jong-il and his son, Kim Jong-un, afterwards authoritative concessions, it has done little to barrier the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Q.What sanctions are currently in place?
A. The United Nations Aegis Council has anesthetized four resolutions back 2006 aimed at chastening North Korea for its nuclear weapons program. In addition, the United States, which charcoal in a abstruse accompaniment of war with North Korea, has imposed its own dieting of austere bread-and-butter sanctions. The accumulated furnishings accept acutely squeezed, but not crippled, North Korea’s economy. The United Nations has banned the North from administering nuclear tests or ablution ballistic missiles, requested that it carelessness all approaching efforts to accompany nuclear weapons and apprenticed it to acknowledgment to negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the alleged six-party talks.
The resolutions accept aswell imposed embargoes on all-embracing arms, weapons-related analysis and development materials, and affluence goods; banned abounding types of banking affairs including transfers of cash; placed new restrictions on diplomats; and created ecology mechanisms for enforcement.
The American sanctions benumb all North Korean acreage interests in the United States, ban a lot of imports of appurtenances and casework from the North, and prohibit American affairs with any names on a banish of North Korean businesses and individuals doubtable of adulterous activities including money laundering, counterfeiting, bill smuggling and narcotics trafficking.
Nothing in the American sanctions prohibits American biking to North Korea or the consign of aliment and added types of altruistic aid, although there are some restrictions.
The sanctions leave allowance for ample barter in abounding types of appurtenances and services. China, which food abundant of North Korea’s basal needs, is not in any abuse of the United Nations resolutions.
Q.How is the South Korean government responding to the North’s threats?
A. Admiral Park Geun-hye, who took appointment in 2013, is the babe of a above admiral who ran South Korea as a absolutist during the Cold War. She already promised that if the North army a nuclear attack, its government would be “erased from the earth.” She has abundantly captivated a close band on North Korea, afterward a added appeasing attitude in the 1990s.
From 1998 to 2008, the South pursued a “sunshine policy” of adaptation and bread-and-butter cooperation that beatific billions of dollars in business investments, appurtenances and altruistic aid to the North. Ms. Park’s actual predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, said the North would charge to accord up its nuclear weapons to accept any added aid. But he was criticized for what abounding saw as a anemic acknowledgment afterwards the North shelled a South Korean island in 2010, killing four people.
Q.Why hasn’t China chock-full North Korea from its attack of threats? Is there any added country that has abundant access on North Korea to stop it?
A. China, the North’s patron, has continued feared that a collapse of the North Korean government could advance to a unified Korea affiliated with the United States.
China helped address and backed the a lot of contempo annular of United Nations sanctions, but it has been afraid to advance the North too hard. Its backbone with the North may be active out, but even China may accept alone bound advice about the chicane aural the Pyongyang government.
Q.Why are relations so bad amid North and South Korea?
A. Afterwards the United States and the Soviet Union disconnected the Korean Peninsula at the end of the Apple War II in 1945, they helped install battling governments in Seoul and Pyongyang. Each asserted claims to the accomplished of Korea. The two fought the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded not in a accord accord but a truce. Mutual apprehension runs deep, although there accept been alternate attempts at political adaptation and bread-and-butter cooperation.
Q.How did the North get nuclear weapons?
A. The activity started beneath Kim Il-sung, the country’s architect and the grandfathering of the accepted leader, Kim Jong-un. Kim Il-sung knew that Gen. Douglas MacArthur capital Washington to acquiesce the use of nuclear weapons adjoin Chinese and North Korean troops during the Korean War.
By the 1980s, American intelligence satellites were watching the nuclear circuitous at Yongbyon appear together. Relations amid the United States and the North grew abnormally close over the affair in 1994, and some in the White House feared a war could breach out. A alliance was eventually formed out that year, the Agreed Framework, but it fell afar in 2002, during the George W. Bush administration, partly over allegations the North was cheating on its agreements and developing accession aisle to a bomb. In 2006, the North conducted its aboriginal nuclear test, a fractional fizzle. But the consecutive tests were added successful.
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