North Korea 'plans bigger nuclear test'

A North Korean diplomat admitted the country’s nuclear test was smaller than expected, and claimed the country was still to detonate a larger device, a South Korean newspaper reported today.

Quoting an unnamed North Korean diplomat at the country’s embassy in Beijing, South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper said the diplomat claimed the test was a success and “smaller in scale than expected”.

“But the success in a small-scale (test) means a large-scale (test) is also possible,” he said in comments posted on the newspaper’s website.

The diplomat also said the North could take “additional measures” following yesterday’s nuclear test, and that the communist nation doesn’t fear sanctions.

“The US should show its dialogue attitude in action if it wants to solve the problem,” the diplomat said in a telephone interview today.

“Otherwise, we continue to go on this footing. We have been under sanctions so far, and therefore there won’t be greater hardship for us.”

The North’s diplomat also repeated Pyongyang’s long-running demand that the US lift financial restrictions against Pyongyang’s alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.