SEOUL, South Korea, North Korea said this morning it has performed its first nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency claimed the test was performed and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

Ramifications: President Bush and Secretary Rice have both repeated that the United States will NOT tolerate a nuclear North Korea. Hostilities would then seem imminent.

Japan will not sit still. We expect constitutional changes allowing the arming of Japan if North Korea is not disarmed immediately. This would not be to the liking of China, the main supporter of North Korea.

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Confirmed by South Korea - 3.6 seismic activity noted.
U.S. Geological Survey says 4.2 magnitude, it's a NUKE!
Australia has also confirmed the seismic activity
China Warned 20 minutes prior to test
South Korea has raised it's Military Defense Level.
October 9th 2006 - South Korean Stocks Plunge on news of test
LOCATION: 240 miles north of Pyongyang (capital)

MOSCOW - Russia's defense minister said Monday that
North Korea's nuclear test was equivalent to 5,000 tons to 15,000 tons of TNT.

That would be far greater than the force given by
South Korea's geological institute, which estimated it at just 550 tons of TNT.

By comparison the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima during World War II was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.

In 1996, France detonated a bomb beneath Fangataufa Atoll about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti that had a yield of about 120,000 tons of TNT.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a magnitude-4.2 seismic event in northeastern North Korea. Asian neighbors also said they registered a seismic event, but only Russia said its monitoring services had detected a nuclear explosion.

No one has reported detecting any radiation.

"We know the exact site of the test. The ecological situation is normal, including on Russian territory in Primorye," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, referring to the Russian Far East province that shares a short border with North Korea.

Interfax, citing an unnamed diplomatic source in Moscow, said that the North Korean Foreign Ministry had informed the Russian ambassador in Pyongyang about the test two hours before it was conducted. The report could not immediately be confirmed.

The major Asian powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council have been quick to condemn North Korea for its nuclear test

"A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act, in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in northeast Asia. We expect the Security Council to take immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act." Tony Snow, White House spokesman

"I condemn this completely irresponsible act by the government of the DPRK (North Korea). The international community has repeatedly urged them to refrain from both missile testing and nuclear testing. This further act of defiance shows North Korea's disregard for the concerns of its neighbours and the wider international community." Tony Blair

advertisement"The development and possession of Nuclear weapons by North Korea will in a major way transform the security environment in North Asia and we will be entering a new, dangerous nuclear age. A North Korea with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles constitutes a grave threat. Japan will now consider harsh measures." Shinzo Abe, Japanese prime minister

"China resolutely opposes the North Korean nuclear test and hopes that North Korea will return to the six-nation talks. Upholding the stability of Northeast Asia is in the interests of all parties." Chinese foreign ministry statement

"North Korea has almost removed room for South Korea to call for continuing dialogue with North Korea in response to international calls for sanctions and pressure. South Korea won't be patient for everything, make concessions on everything and accept all demands from North Korea as it did in the past." Roh Moo-hyun, South Korean president

"Russia unconditionally condemns tests conducted by North Korea. It's not only about Korea, it's about the huge damage which has been done to the process of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons." Vladimir Putin, Russian president

"Australia will call on the United Nations Security Council to take swift and effective action against North Korea and impose strong measures under Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter. We will also advocate a UN Security Council regime against the DPRK that includes targeted financial and travel sanctions, other trade restrictions and or aviation restrictions. We are outraged that a country that has to rely on the international community to feed its own people devotes so many of its scarce resources to missiles and nuclear weapons programmes." John Howard, Australian prime minister

"This test profoundly jeopardizes regional stability and represents a severe threat to international peace and security. The EU works in close cooperation with the international community for a decisive international response to this provocative act." EU presidency, currently held by Finland

"Today's nuclear tests endangers peace and security in the region and beyond. The United Nations Security Council is now called on to counter this North Korean provocation with a determined reaction." Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister

"A test of this kind is a provocation that is as deliberate as it is serious, directed against the entire international community." Carl Bildt, Swedish foreign minister

"North Korea should have no illusion of the gravity with which the international community views its action. The UN Security Council has already moved, prior to news of this alleged test, and must now stay seized of this issue." Helen Clark, New Zealand prime minister.

At 12:31 a.m. ET today (October 9, 2006), when the AP broke the news that North Korea conducted a nuclear test, Fox's weather gal, Janice Dean, who came from the Don Imus Show, broke in to make the announcement. During her halting report Fox ran chyrons like, "Report: North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test," "North Korean News Agency Says Nuclear Test Conducted," and "U.S. Defense Officials: No Confirmation of Nuclear Test."

Seconds later, Fox's legal analyst Megyn Kendall came on and said that she heard this weekend that the only thing that would "knock" the GOP/Mark Foley scandal off the air was a North Korean nuclear test.

Comment: It now appears that the AP got it right. Never mind the tremendous implications of this -- it's all about GOP politics, all the time, on Fox "News."

North Korea's apparent nuclear test last night may well be regarded as a failure of the Bush administration's nuclear nonproliferation policy.

Since George W. Bush became president, North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor and increased its stock of weapons-grade plutonium, so it may now have enough for 10 or 11 weapons, compared with one or two when Bush took office. North Korea's test could also unleash a nuclear arms race in Asia, with Japan and South Korea feeling pressure to build nuclear weapons for defensive reasons.

Yet a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.

Now U.S. officials will push for tough sanctions at the U.N. Security Council, and are considering a raft of largely unilateral measures, including stopping and inspecting every ship that goes in and out of North Korea.

"This fundamentally changes the landscape now," one U.S. official said last night.

When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang's reactor was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States. Clinton administration officials thought they were so close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles that in the days before he left office, Bill Clinton seriously considered making the first visit to Pyongyang by a U.S. president.

But conservatives had long been deeply skeptical of the deal freezing North Korea's program - known as the Agreed Framework - in part because it called for building two light-water nuclear reactors (largely funded by the Japanese and South Koreans). When then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly said in early 2001 that he favored continuing Clinton's approach, Bush rebuked him.

Bush then labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" that included Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, further riling Pyongyang. U.S. officials say Bush carried a deep, visceral hatred of Kim and his dictatorial regime, and often chafed at efforts by his advisers to tone down his language about Kim, who within North Korea is regarded as a near-deity.

The missile negotiations with North Korea ended and no talks were held between senior U.S. and North Korean officials for nearly two years. Many top U.S. officials were determined to kill the Agreed Framework, and when U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that North Korea had a clandestine program to enrich uranium, they had their chance.

A U.S. delegation confronted Pyongyang about the secret program - and U.S. officials said North Korean officials appeared to confirm it. (Pyongyang later denied that.) The United States pressed to cut off immediately deliveries of heavy fuel oil promised under the Agreed Framework. North Korea, in response, evicted international inspectors and restarted its nuclear reactor.

Pyongyang moved quickly to reprocess 8,000 spent fuel rods - previously in a cooling pond under 24-hour international surveillance - in order to obtain the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, hampered by internal disputes, struggled to fashion a diplomatic effort to confront North Korea. Unlike the Clinton administration - which suggested to North Korea that it would attack if Pyongyang moved to reprocess the plutonium - the Bush administration never set out "red lines" that North Korea must not cross. Bush administration officials argued that doing so would only tempt North Korea to cross those lines.

Whereas Clinton had reached the Agreed Framework through lengthy bilateral negotiations, the Bush administration felt that North Korea would be less likely to wiggle out of a future deal if it also included its regional neighbors - China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. But it took months of internal struggles to arrange the meetings - and North Korea insisted it wanted to have only bilateral talks with the United States.

It was also difficult to coordinate policies with the other parties. The talks largely stalled, as North Korea continued to build its stockpile of plutonium.

After Bush was reelected, new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched an effort to revitalize the six-nation talks, which a year ago yielded a "statement of principles" to guide future negotiations, including the possibility of major economic help, security assurances and normalization of relations with the United States if North Korea dismantled its nuclear programs. To the anger of conservatives within the administration, the statement also suggested that North Korea might one day be supplied with light-water reactors as envisioned in the Clinton deal.

But that proved to be the high point of the talks. The administration issued a statement saying the reactor project was officially terminated - and North Korea would need to pass many hurdles before it could ever envision having a civilian nuclear program. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, focused on North Korea illicit counterfeiting activities, targeting a bank in Macao that reportedly held the personal accounts of Kim and his family. Many banks around the world began to refuse to deal with North Korean companies, further angering Pyongyang.

With the end of the negotiating track marking the likely advent of sanctions, Pyongyang's action will test the proposition of those Bush administration officials who argued that a confrontational approach would finally bring North Korea to heel.