North Korea First Nuclear Test
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on 9 October 2006, at a site at Punggye-ri, becoming the eighth state to detonate a nuclear device and the first to do so after withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The yield was under a kiloton, well below what a plutonium implosion device should produce, and the test was widely assessed as a partial failure — enough to demonstrate a capability, not enough to demonstrate a working weapon. The programme had a long history. The Agreed Framework of 1994 had frozen the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon in exchange for fuel oil and light-water reactors. It collapsed in 2002 when the United States confronted Pyongyang over a covert uranium enrichment effort; North Korea expelled inspectors, restarted the reactor, and reprocessed the spent fuel it had been storing. It announced its withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003 and declared it had weapons in 2005. The Security Council responded with Resolution 1718, imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on luxury goods and dual-use items, and China supported it, which was the notable feature. The six-party talks briefly revived afterwards and produced a 2007 agreement to disable Yongbyon; the cooling tower was demolished on television in 2008 and the process collapsed over verification. Five further tests followed, in 2009, 2013, twice in 2016 and in 2017, the last with a yield of well over a hundred kilotons and claimed as a thermonuclear device. No agreement since has slowed the programme. The arsenal is now estimated at several dozen warheads, and the state has written its nuclear status into its constitution. Denuclearisation is no longer a serious objective of any government's policy, whatever is said publicly.
- Year: 2006 CE
- Category: Military
