SOUTH KOREA FLEXES MISSILE POWER
SEOUL: Two days after North Korea’s nuclear test, South Korea touted on Thursday the deployment of a new cruise missile capable of hitting targets in the North “anywhere, at any time.”
The defense ministry called in reporters for a special video presentation of the recently deployed missile being fired from a warship and a submarine.
“With this missile, we could hit any facility, equipment or individual target in the North anywhere, at any time of our choosing,” Army Major General Ryu Young-Jeo told the briefing.
Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said that the missile was accurate enough to target a particular window on a building.
It has “deadly destructive power” that could “restrain the enemy headquarters’ activities” during wartime, Kim told reporters.
South Korea’s military has been on a heightened state of alert ever since Pyongyang first threatened the nuclear test, which was eventually conducted on Tuesday. It was the North’s third test, following previous detonations in 2006 and 2009, and seismic data suggested that it was significantly more powerful.
Lack of data on nuclear test
South Korean warships and aircraft equipped with highly sensitive detection devices were deployed in the wake of the test to try and collect any traces of radioactive fallout.
But urgent efforts to find out the type of device detonated in North Korea’s latest nuclear test appeared to be getting nowhere on Thursday, with South Korean experts unable to detect any radioactive fallout.
The North’s test triggered an immediate scramble to collect and analyze any fallout data that might provide crucial clues about the nature of the test and the progress Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program has made.
While seismic data was able to shed light on the likely yield of the underground test—estimated at six to seven kilotons—the main hunt was for elusive radioisotopes that might confirm the type of fissile material that was used.
Experts are particularly keen to establish whether the North switched from plutonium—used in the 2006 and 2009 tests—to a new and self-sustaining nuclear weaponization program using highly enriched uranium.
The South’s state- run Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said on Thursday that it had analyzed eight atmospheric samples apparently collected by warships and air force planes equipped with highly sensitive detection devices.
“No radioactive isotope has been found yet,” the commission said in a statement.
Their priority target was traces of xenon gases released in the detonation that would point to the weapon type. “We are analyzing samples and xenon has not been found,” the commission statement added.
If the underground test was well contained, it is quite possible there would be little or no radioactive seepage into the atmosphere.
And even if some gases did escape, scientists stress there is a large amount of luck involved in collecting them. No xenon gases were detected after the North’s 2009 test.
Military detectors and the commission said that there were 122 automated devices across South Korea that were continually capturing and analyzing air samples.
The detection effort is running on a very tight deadline. Xenon-133m, a metastable isotope needed to pin down the fissile material type, has a half-life of just over two days.
Proof of a uranium test would confirm what has long been suspected: That the North can produce weapons-grade uranium, doubling its pathways to building more bombs in the future.
The North has substantial deposits of uranium ore and it is much easier secretly to enrich uranium in centrifuges rather than enriching plutonium in a nuclear reactor.
South Korean defense ministry shows the test- launch of its new cruise missile being fired from a warship in Seoul on February 14.