In a round of calls
Sunday, Kerry, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea's
Kim Sung-hwan all agreed the North must understand "that it will face
significant consequences from the international community if it
continues its provocative behavior," according to a summary of the calls
from the U.S. State Department.
Earlier Sunday, North
Korea announced that its leader, Kim Jong Un, "has made an important
decision" that would strengthen the country. The brief statement on the
state-run news agency KCNA provided no details, but it said the decision
was made at a meeting of the reclusive
Stalinist state's Party Central
Military Committee.
Across the Demilitarized
Zone, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called on his government to
be prepared for a possible test. Lee paid a visit to the underground
bunker that serves as the South's crisis management center, his press
office reported.
North Korea has conducted
two previous nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009, and proclaimed itself a
"nuclear state" in 2012. U.S. officials told CNN last week that the
North appeared to be ready test another nuclear device "at any time."
U.S. analysts believe the
2006 test had a yield of about 1 kiloton -- comparable to the explosive
power of about 1,000 tons of TNT -- while the second was roughly 2
kilotons, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate
committee in 2012.
By comparison, the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was roughly 15 kilotons.
The U.N. Security
Council voted to tighten sanctions on Pyongyang in January, after the
North launched a satellite aboard a long-range rocket in December.
The North Koreans
responded by announcing they planned another nuclear test and more
long-range rocket launches as part of a new phase of confrontation with
the United States.
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