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09.12.2004 The Korea Herald
Seoul, Washington officials doubt Pyongyang conducted nuclear test

SEOUL - A huge explosion rocked North Korea's Yanggang Province bordering China last week, spouting a cloud of smoke more than six kilometers in diameter, but Seoul and Washington brushed aside fears of a nuclear weapons test.

"It appears North Korea did not conduct a nuclear weapons test and we are trying to confirm whether it was fireworks, a fire in mountains or an accidental explosion," spokesman Kim Jong-min at the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, said yesterday,

Another senior Cheong Wa Dae official who requested anonymity said, "I cannot definitely say there was a huge mushroom cloud as a variety of clouds were there (at the time of the explosion Thursday)."

Initial reports of the blast from Yonhap News Agency said the explosion caused a mushroom cloud - usually ssociated with nuclear weapons tests.

U.S. State Department officials in Washington also said they are "pretty sure" that the blast was not a nuclear explosion or test.

"We've got no indication that anything of the sort (nuclear test) has happened. We believe these reports to be completely unfounded," said an official, who asked not to be identified.

The blast appeared stronger than an April 22 explosion of railway wagons with oil and chemicals that killed 161 people and injured 1,300 others in the North Korean town of Ryongcheon, near the western tip of the border with China.

The latest blast was in Kimhyongjik County on Sept. 9, the day North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding and an occasion which is celebrated throughout the secretive communist state.

While North Korea characteristically was silent on the reports and the cause of the explosion, there was immediate speculation it may have been North Korea's first test of one of its nuclear weapons. The New York Times said Saturday that U.S. intelligence reports had some officials in Washington believing the North may be near conducting a nuclear test.

But, like Cheong Wa Dae, South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young played down the possibility of a nuclear weapons test.

"It is not yet clear whether the explosion is related to an intentional nuclear experiment or a simple accident."

A U.S. satellite picked up the damage and crater left by the explosion in Kimhyongjik County, where North Korea is reported have a major base housing Daepodong intermediate-range ballistics missiles that have a range of 2,200 kilometers.

Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying that the explosion was near the missile base.

A senior South Korean official who requested anonymity said the government was ruling out the possibility the explosion may be linked to a possible nuclear test by Pyongyang.

"The area is surrounded by mountains and a railroad track runs through the area which means at least a small number of people live there. We don't think there are casualties. And the area is also connected to the border with China, so we doubt that the explosion was a nuclear test."

"It's difficult to say, but it won't be easy for North Korea to conduct a nuclear test without resulting in massive losses of its own people," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert in Seoul. "I think there is more possibility that it is a simple accident, rather than a deliberate nuclear test."

The New York Times news service said U.S. President George W. Bush and his top advisers had received intelligence reports describing a confusing series of actions by North Korea that some experts believed could indicate the country was preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test.

Citing unnamed senior officials with access to intelligence, it said U.S. intelligence agencies appeared divided over the significance of these new North Korean actions.

The suspicious activities included the movement of materials around several suspected test sites, including one near a location where intelligence agencies reported last year that conventional explosives were being tested that could compress a plutonium core and set off a nuclear explosion, the newspaper said.

But officials have not seen the classic indicators of preparations at a test site, in which cables are laid to measure an explosion in a deep test pit, it added.

U.S. officials said if North Korea proceeded with a test, it would probably be with a plutonium bomb, perhaps one fabricated from the 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that the North has boasted in the past few months have been reprocessed into bomb fuel.

However, some analysts in agencies that were most cautious about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction cautioned that they do not believe the activity detected in North Korea in the past three weeks is necessarily the harbinger of a test, the Times said.

Some analysts fear a successful nuclear weapon test by North Korea could change the balance of power in Asia, perhaps leading to a new nuclear arms race there.