ANALYSIS:Events of this week move North Korea even further apart from the global community, writes CLIFFORD COONAN
THE GLOBAL reaction to North Korea’s second nuclear test on Monday, where the secretive enclave on the northern part of the Korean peninsula detonated an underground atomic device many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has been one of exasperation and anger in equal measure.
Just how worried should we be by this latest act of defiance from a tiny, desperately poor north Asian dictatorship which has not engaged in any meaningful way in world affairs since the end of the Korean war in 1953?
The events of this week have marked the most serious setback in over half a century to efforts to bring North Korea back into the global community by means of dialogue.
It certainly confirms North Korea as the world’s eighth declared nuclear power alongside Britain, the US, Russia, China, France, India and Pakistan.
And to judge by the powerful threats issued daily by the Korean Central News Agency, there is a strong possibility the situation could escalate into military conflict, seriously destabilising the region.
There has been so much sabre-rattling by the North Koreans in the past few years that angry rhetoric and aggressive gesturing are increasingly the default setting for this mysterious, isolated country.
South Korean and US troops facing their North Korean counterparts across the demilitarised zone (DMZ) – where two million soldiers are stationed – raised their alert level to the highest category since the last test in 2006.
And the South Korean military says tensions are at their highest in 15 years.
Incidents such as blowing up a South Korean airliner and kidnapping South Korean film stars and Japanese nationals show that this is a dangerous regime, even if the popular image of North Korean leader Kim Il-Song as a crazed megalomaniac – Elvis-quiffed and Bordeaux-guzzling – is one we have courtesy of the South Korean secret service and the CIA, and most likely oversimplifies a far more complicated and dangerous figure.
There is no mistaking the importance of North Korea’s recent acts of defiance in the face of international censure such as the missile launches and the atomic bomb tests. These actions do bear out the image of a wobbly, aggressive dictatorship capable of generating massive instability in an entire region.
With fellow nuclear power Pakistan facing huge problems at the other end of the continent, Asia has a lot of nuclear issues on its plate right now, and the pressure is on the international community to respond accordingly.
Pyongyang has abandoned the armistice that ended formal hostilities at the conclusion of the 1950-1953 Korean war.
It has lashed out at the US and South Korea, warning it would attack the south if any of its ships were intercepted as part of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a US-led agreement to blockade any nation suspected of trading nuclear materials.
The North Koreans also reacted with fury after the international community tightened sanctions following its launch of a rocket in April. Pyongyang said that launch put a communications satellite into space, but western nations said it was a disguised long-range missile.
North Korea attacked the south for being a submissive lapdog to Washington, and has long argued that it has no choice but to build an atomic arsenal to protect itself from a hostile world. Yet recent moves have all been unilateral, and occurred despite a softer tone from the Obama administration in Washington.
North Korea despises its democratic neighbour to the south for its relationship with Washington, but there is also a sense that it also envies the relationship, and many analysts read the defiance of the test as a way to get Washington to open direct talks with Pyongyang, avoiding the tortuous route of the six-party talks with both Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the US.
Pyongyang has enough material to probably make six to eight nuclear bombs.
What remains to be seen is whether North Korea can miniaturise the warheads to be transported on a missile.
Yet even without arming warheads the North Koreans can sell the technology to any one of the unscrupulous forces at work around the globe. This means Pyongyang has some of the most powerful bargaining chips on the planet going into any subsequent negotiations. This has North Korea’s neighbours worried.
The nuclear test is a slap in the face to China, North Korea’s only meaningful ally. Chinese troops fought side-by-side with North Koreans during the Korean war, and food, fuel and consumer goods from China are effectively what keeps Kim Jong-il’s regime going. Now there are growing calls among senior thinkers for China to reconsider its policy toward North Korea.
China does not want instability in a neighbour, particularly not the kind of instability that draws in US troops. Nor does it want a stream of two million North Korean refugees crossing the Yalu river.
The world will now be watching to see if China uses its veto on the UN Security Council to avoid imposing tougher sanctions against its neighbour despite its stronger language condemning the test. To date, China has stopped short of enforcing sanctions against the North in any meaningful way. This time could well be different, and that would be an important advance.
As far as the Chinese are concerned, Pyongyang is being deliberately provocative by showing its nuclear muscles to the world, and trying to bypass Beijing and talk directly to Washington.
China is also keen that the escalating situation in North Korea does not prompt Japan into starting its own nuclear weapons programme.
There are growing calls in Japan for it to take such steps to protect itself against aggressive neighbours, and this move would undoubtedly lead to a nuclear arms race. Such a development would alter the power structure in Asia again, and is a scenario the Chinese do not want.
At times this week we have had the horrifying prospect of a war breaking out over wounded pride, paranoia and a need to save face.
The fact that the international community looks set to act in an unusually unified way in condemning North Korean aggression is hopefully a sign that these reasons will not be enough to shatter one of the longest periods of peace and stability in north Asian post-war history.