As of: January 21, 2024, 4:57 p.m
By: Sven Hauberg
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Experts fear the first North Korean nuclear test since 2017. How likely is that - and can escalation still be prevented?
On September 3, 2017, the earth shook North Korea.
In the underdeveloped northeast of the country, houses collapsed and dozens of people died or were injured.
At least that's what media from the south of the divided Korean peninsula reported a little later.
It was not a natural disaster that caused the damage - but an order from Kim Jong-un: North Korea's dictator had ordered a nuclear bomb test.
The bomb went off around 12 noon local time, with an estimated yield of up to 250 kilotons, 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that reduced Hiroshima to rubble in 1945.
It was the sixth and last nuclear bomb test by the North Korean regime.
Since then, politicians and observers around the world have been wondering with concern: When will Kim Jong-un again instruct his scientists to press the red button?
As recently as November, southern intelligence warned that this could happen sometime this year;
A little later it was said from Seoul that new provocations from the North could be expected at the beginning of the year, possibly before the South Korean parliamentary elections in April.
The USA is also alarmed.
In March 2023, an outlook on the threat situation for the next twelve months said that North Korea “is probably preparing to test a nuclear bomb.”
According to expert Sue Mi Terry from the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a test before the US presidential election in November would be conceivable.
“This would make the Biden administration look like it has failed on the North Korea issue and would therefore be helpful to Trump,” Terry said at a CSIS event in early January.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and his daughter Ju-ae watch the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in December.
© AFP
“If Kim Jong-un wanted a test, he could have done it last year”
Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King's College London, believes that not even Kim Jong-un himself knows when the next test will take place.
“If he wanted a test, he could have done it last year or the year before last,” said Pacheco Pardo in an interview with the
Frankfurter Rundschau
.
“And if he doesn’t want a test, then he would have communicated that openly in order to present himself as a responsible actor in a nuclear power.”
It is undisputed that Kim is arming himself.
Shortly before Christmas, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the fifth time in a year, something the country is forbidden by UN resolutions;
and only on Friday did the regime declare that it had tested an underwater system capable of nuclear weapons.
Last September, North Korea's parliament also passed a new law that enables a preventive nuclear strike.
Pyongyang also recently rejected a peaceful reunification with the South.
For the two renowned experts Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, the situation is so serious that they felt compelled to issue a dramatic warning: “The situation on the Korean peninsula is more dangerous than it has been since the beginning of June 1950,” wrote Carlin and Hecker a few days ago in an article for the Stimson Center think tank.
The Korean War began in June 1950 and ended three years later with an armistice but no peace treaty.
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“A test would make it clear to the international community that North Korea is a nuclear power”
So does this all amount to the ultimate provocation, a seventh nuclear weapons test?
In any case, there are initial signs.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), North Korea recently put a second nuclear reactor into operation.
At the end of December, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi spoke of a “reason for concern”.
The light water reactor, which is located on the site of the Yongbyon nuclear facility north of the capital Pyongyang, could produce weapons-grade “plutonium that can be separated during reprocessing.”
It is unclear how many nuclear bombs North Korea currently has.
Estimates range from a few dozen to more than 100 nuclear warheads.
Expert Pacheco Pardo believes that North Korea is currently working on reducing the size of these warheads so that they can be mounted on ICBMs.
A seventh nuclear test could provide the regime with important insights into this.
But it is also possible that Kim simply wants to test a nuclear bomb with greater explosive power.
“But I don’t expect a major technological leap because, from what we know, the North’s nuclear weapons are already very advanced,” said Pacheco Pardo.
He suspects that Kim is primarily concerned with a political message: "A test would once again make it clear to the international community that North Korea is a nuclear power and that this can no longer be changed."
What role do China and Russia play?
A seventh nuclear test could hardly be stopped.
Since the failed meeting between Kim Jong-un and then US President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February 2019, there has been no progress in disarmament negotiations with North Korea.
“I don’t think the West can do much,” says Pacheco Pardo.
He points out that the United Nations had already failed in 2006 to prevent North Korea's first nuclear test, which Kim's father Kim Jong-il had carried out in 2006.
Today, North Korea only maintains significant diplomatic contacts with China and Russia.
Beijing, however, regularly emphasizes that China has good relations with its neighboring country;
But that doesn't mean that you can also exert influence on Kim Jong-un.
The relationship between Pyongyang and Moscow is also complex: Vladimir Putin depends on arms deliveries from North Korea to keep the war in Ukraine going, Kim Jong-un on Russian high technology.
It is now up to Beijing and Moscow to show Kim Jong-un where their red lines lie, said former US intelligence officer Sydney Seiler at the CSIS event.
“I have every reason to believe that China does not want instability and war on the Korean peninsula,” said Seiler.
“But I’m not so sure whether Vladimir Putin is so vehemently against it.”
For Ramon Pacheco Pardo, diplomatic advances don't make much of a difference anyway.
“North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and it also has missiles.
So we can just carry on as before,” he says.
Also because it can obtain the necessary technologies and materials via global smuggling networks.
“And Russia and China can’t stop that either.”