North Korea’s dud?

October 9, 2006

I’m not even close to an expert on such matters, and I certainly won’t pretend to be, but Knobboy pointed out this analysis of the North Korean nuclear test from Defense Tech, which is always a reliable and credible source on these issues.

In short, Defense Tech’s Jeffrey Lewis said North Korea’s bomb was “probably a dud.”

They’ve published lat/long (41.294 N, 129.134 E) and Mb estimates (4.2) for the North Korean test.

There is lots of data floating around: The CTBTO called it 4.0; The South Koreans report 3.58-3.7.

You’re thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.

But even at 4.2, the test was probably a dud…. No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.

Everything about the [tag]North Korea[/tag] announcement seems a little off. Given what N.K. claims to have tested, the Richter magnitude isn’t at all where it should be. Maybe they detonated a very small bomb; maybe they detonated a very big bomb poorly; or maybe something else.

If the test was a dud, it’s a lucky break for the U.S. and a stunning setback for Kim Jung Il. As Slate’s Fred Kaplan noted after the last unsuccessful North Korea test, “It’s like a bank robber who gets everyone’s attention by firing his gun at the ceiling — and a little flag with the word ‘Bang!’ pops out of the barrel. The only effect is that he’s no longer taken seriously.”

Also, following up on a question from comments about the [tag]Democrats[/tag]’ response to the developments, I thought I’d pass along a copy of the official Democratic talking points, what struck me as compelling. In their entirety:

President Bush’s North Korean policy is one of failure. Over the past six years, Kim Jong Il has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, increased his plutonium stockpiles and continued testing missiles that he exports to the Middle East and Africa. And now, it seems, North Korea has tested its first nuclear weapon. The Bush Administration’s policy towards Pyongyang has made America less safe. It’s time for a new direction.

Under President [tag]Bush[/tag]’s Watch, North Korea Has Dramatically Increased Its Weapons Material Stockpile. When President Bush took office in 2000, Pyongyang had enough fissile material to manufacture 1-2 nuclear weapons. Today, experts believe that North Korea possesses material sufficient to build between 4 and 13 nuclear weapons and, unless an agreement is reached to stop the country’s program, it is estimated that Pyongyang will have enough material to manufacture between 8 and 17 nuclear weapons by 2008. [Institute for Science and International Security, 6/26/06]

Under Bush’s Watch, North Korea Withdrew from the Non Proliferation Treaty. Between December 2002 and January 2003, North Korea ejected IAEA inspectors and announced its withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty. [Arms Control Today, July/August 2006]

Under Bush’s Watch, North Korea Tested Numerous [tag]Missiles[/tag]. “The Taepodong-2 was the third of at least six missiles launched beginning at 2:33 p.m. EDT and ending four hours later. They included two short-range Scud missiles and three medium-range Nodongs, another type of Scud, Hadley said. It was the first time in recent memory that North Korea had launched so many missiles at once.” [Washington Post, 7/5/06]

Failures of Bush [tag]Diplomacy[/tag] Have Led to the Current Impasse. “The Bush administration has tried to ignore North Korea, then, reluctantly, to engage it, and then to squeeze its bankers in a manner intended to make the country’s leader, Kim Jong Il, personally feel the pinch. Yet none of these steps in the past six years has worked. So now, after a barrage of missile launchings by North Korea, President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of ‘familiar bad choices.’” [New York Times, 7/6/06]

While Other Presidents Had Difficulties with North Korea, Bush’s Policies Have Made the Problem Worse. “Dealing with North Korea has frustrated every president since Truman. But it has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Bush because his administration has engaged in a six-year internal argument about whether to negotiate with the country or try to plot its collapse — it has sought to do both, simultaneously — and because America’s partners in dealing with North Korea each have differing interests in North Korea’s future.” [New York Times, 6/6/06]

Under Bush’s Watch North Korea Has Continued to Violate Basic Human Rights. “Thousands of North Koreans languish in forced labor camps, where torture is endemic. Many die in prison because of mistreatment, malnutrition, and lack of medical care. The government of North Korea has consistently refused to allow U.N. human rights rapporteurs and other independent and impartial organizations to investigate the situation inside North Korea, despite two successive resolutions of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights urging that it do so.” [Human Rights Watch, Letter to United Nations Security Council, 9/16/06]

Senate Democrats Have Consistently Worked to Fix the Failed Bush Administration Policy on North Korea

September 2006. The House and Senate pass final legislation in the Defense Authorization bill cosponsored by Senators Reid, Biden, and Levin establishing a North Korea Policy Coordinator and mandating a policy review and new reports to Congress on the nuclear and missile threat from North Korea. Awaits presidential action.

June 22, 2006. The Senate passes legislation in the Defense Authorization bill cosponsored by Senators Reid, Biden, and Levin establishing a North Korea Policy Coordinator and mandating a policy review and new reports to Congress on the nuclear and missile threat from North Korea.

June 16, 2006. Democratic Senators Levin and Clinton send a letter to President Bush urging him to “develop a single, coordinated Presidential strategy to diplomatically address North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat.” The senators also urged the President to appoint a senior Presidential envoy to implement the strategy and to keep Congress and the American people fully informed of North Korea’s activities.

February 3, 2006. Senate Democrats Reid, Levin, Biden and Rockefeller send a letter to the President noting that Bush failed to mention North Korea in his State of the Union address and saying that the President’s policy “still has not resulted in an elimination, freeze, or even a slowing of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile activities.” The letter also calls for a declassified version of the most recent NIE on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs so Congress can have accurate information to engage in a full and free debate about policy options. [The Administration subsequently denied the request for declassification of the NIE.]

July 3, 2005. Senate Democrats Levin and Clinton publish an editorial in the Washington Post calling on the Bush administration to inject seriousness and urgency into efforts to negotiate with North Korea. The authors argued that the Administration needs to take control of the talks, stalled for over a year, by spelling out a package to the North Koreans that addresses their fundamental need for economic assistance, sending a senior American official to meet with Kim Jong Il, and agreeing with our allies on a timetable for diplomacy – deadlines for when the next meeting will be held and for a final solution.

July 2005. Senate Democrats commission and publish a study by the National Security Advisory Group to review the Bush Administration’s policy on North Korea, Iran, loose nukes, and the nonproliferation treaty. Their report, “Worst Weapons in Worst Hands: US Inaction on the Nuclear Terror Threat Since 9/11, and a Path of Action,” drew upon the analysis of the Group’s chairman, former Defense Secretary Bill Perry, and more than a dozen national security experts including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former Assistant Secretaries of Defense Ash Carter, Graham Allison, and Michele Flournoy.

June 23, 2005. Congressional Democrats Reid, Levin, Biden and Rockefeller send a letter to the President noting that “with respect to the challenge of North Korea, American national security has degraded over the past year,” and noting that “our current path leads to one of two bad outcomes: either the United States essentially will acquiesce to the North’s serial production of nuclear weapons, or we will find ourselves in a military confrontation with a desperate, nuclear-armed regime.” The Senators urged the President to appoint a special envoy to coordinate Korea policy and represent the US in direct dialogue with North Korea and at the Six Party Talks, and urged that priorities be set to end North Korea’s production of plutonium, remove all fissile material from the country, and dismantle its nuclear weapons related facilities. [The Administration eventually responded, promising progress in the coming weeks and months.]

Which part of the Democratic party produced the above talking points? Is there a link? Great job, whoever.

  • These talking points are excellent. They give a clear idea of where the Democrats stand — diplomatic involvement over ignoring the problem — and not one “me too” in regards to the missile defense shield.

    Thanks for passing these along, CB.

  • The Gulf of Tonkin incident was also a ‘dud’, but it was used as an excuse to start a war.

    Imagine your George Bush. You’re already angry because of bad polls and disloyal ex-employees. Now Kim Jon Il disses you publicly at a time when your preoccupied with domestic politics and your conventional armies are tied down in Iraq. And remember, your closest advisors are Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and possibly (even hopefully) your Dad.

    What do you do?

    Is there a 1% chance that North Korea will be the source of a bomb that strikes the US?

  • Which part of the Democratic party produced the above talking points?

    Senate Dem caucus. Sorry, there’s no link; I got them via email.

  • According to Shrub’s speech (I just read the transcript, couldn’t stomach the video), it doesn’t matter if its a dud. Even claiming to set off a nuke is “provacative.” (There’s that word again, would someone please give the speech writer a !#$!@* thesaurus?)

    But it still leaves the big burning question: Whatya gonna do about it, huh? Besides invade Venezuela, I mean. The threat of sanctions doesn’t seem to mean dick to the NoKo government and one official has come out and said the UN should congratulate NoKo for its success. (Full marks for cockiness and scary looniness.) If I don the tinfoil hat it looks like NoKo is trying to push the world to take some action that gives Kim Jong Illin’ an excuse to unleash the military on his neighbors. I don’t know why, it just seems he’s trying to goad the rest of the world to do something unpleasant. I do wish some one in the White House would tell us why it continues to refuse to meet one-on-one with NoKo. What are they afraid of?

    Or wait. This must be the October Surprise. We’re supposed to look at the maniac in charge in NoKo and think “Hey, our maniacs aren’t so bad after all!” You think?

  • Great job, Senate Democratic caucus. I thought that Howard Dean & Co. might be behind the talking points, but realistically only Senate staff could have pulled these points together. Talking points like these should serve as “a text book example” for how other parts of the Democratic party should put together talking points.

  • The funny thing is that it is easier to build a big bomb than a little one. Apprantly NK couldn’t do either. For all we know they just packed megatons of TNT in a hole and set that off.

    Boy George II is amazing. Telling the world they will test a bomb is provocative. Telling the world they did test a bomb is provocative. Boy George II, he is really scared of words.

    That’s why he can’t leave Iraq, he’s afraid that Osama bin Laden will say “We Won, we won! Your father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries.” and taunt Boy Goerge II a second time (Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”)

  • “Three words. Suitcase Nuke Test. They’re getting ready to ship them out.”

    The actual facts are that it is harder to make a small bomb than a big bomb. This thing should have been in the range of 3-5 kilotons minimum, going by everyone else’s experience setting off a first nuke, but it’s coming out at around 10-20% of that, which is a dud.

  • Dud or no, the fact remains “Axis of Evil” member North Korea has demonstrable nuclear ambitions and weapons-grade plutonium. It happened on Bush’s watch. Chalk up one more massive failure for the Decider.

  • From Jane’s:

    Although details are tentative, initial and unconfirmed South Korean reports indicate that the test was a fission device with a yield of .55 kT. By comparison the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima yielded approximately 12.5 kT. The figure of .55 kT, however, seems too low given the 4.2 register on the Richter scale. This could suggest – depending upon the geological make-up of the test site – a yield of 2-12 kT. If, however, the lower yield is correct, it would suggest that the test had been a “pre- or post-detonation” event (ie a failure), as it had been anticipated that North Korea’s first nuclear test would have a significantly higher yield.

  • I doubt it was a dud- rather, it never happened. (not tin-foiling here). Sure, there was an explosion, but it was an underground explosion, with, conveniently ‘no radiation leaks’. This means that, while U.S. satellites could certainly see the site, and we have satellites which can detect a radiological signature, then they didn’t ‘see’ anything… (and, really, absolutely no radiological signature left aboveground whatsoever? That is almost beyond belief…)

    5 bucks will get you 10 that the North Koreans merely buried a bunch of TNT, and set that off. The resulting explosion, underground, would look almost exactly (on camera) the same as a nuke going off (see any number of documentary films of U.S. nuke tests). And until the Pentagon or the NSA comes out and mentions that their satellites have detected radiation in the immediate area, I am going to stick with that.

  • Now, if I look at the Jane’s quote that Tom put up, it’s possible—given the Richter magnitude—that NoKo successfully detonated a small fission device. If they put three or four such devices atop their smaller missiles, they could set a chain of detonations across the line in SoKo that’s (1) behind the forward-area troops on the SoKo side of the frontier, and (2) in direct line-up with Seoul. This (1) severely hampers the SoKo government from functioning, and (2) impedes both a fall-back maneuver by the SoKo/US forces at the frontier, and the bringing up of reserves from the rear areas. This could effectively stop any conventional counteroffensive, should the NoKo army elect to push southwards after the missile-strikes.

    The favored thinking has always been that Kim would go for strategic weaponry; it might be that he’s invested in tactical pieces, to spread his plutonium supply out among a larger number of devices. Four small bombs—at Inchon, Seoul, Chingju, and Samchok—would cut the northern third of the South off from any effective means of relief, should Kim order conventional troops southward. That leaves the UN and Herr Bush with two options: Either to cede one-third of the South to Kim, or to employ strategic nuclear weapons against North Korea.

    Then, there’s the other question—are Kim’s bombs “clean” (Plutonium only), or has he added some “nasty” stuff into the tamper mix? If he’s producing “dirty” nukes, the fallout hazard increased geometrically—and the last time I looked it up, North Korea has a lot of Zinc on its hands….

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