Breaking….

“North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test.

U.S. and South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

South Korean intelligence officials said a seismic wave of magnitude-3.58 had been detected in North Hamkyung province, according to Yonhap. It said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city on the northeast coast, citing defense officials.

North Korean scientists “successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions,” the KCNA report said, adding this was “a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation.”

The director of South Korea’s monitoring center that is watching for a test with sound and seismic detectors declined to immediately comment on the reported test.

“We don’t know whether it is a nuclear test or not,” an official at the earthquake center at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources said on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the issue.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity in North Korea, although it was not clear whether a blast would be strong enough for its sensors.”

My wife is Korean, and as some of you know I’m a two tour veteran of the DMZ in the 1970s, and I know this, that you simply cannot negotiate with Kim Jong il, any more than you could with his wack job father.

At home we have a satellite with Korean news on right now and they are all over this, and treating it as though it happened. There are public sirens going off all over the place in the South, that means everyone off the street and a curfew in place.

Underground tests are hard to verify without satellite data and other detection measures, as no doubt that data is being rounded up now. What makes me skeptical at this point is the possible location Hamkyung province where corn farming is done extensively, not a likely location for a nuclear test, although with Jong anything is possible.

This will be the first test for South Korea’s Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, the new UN Chief as he said that getting the North under control will be a priority.

I’ll update as I get more information.

UPDATE: According to news reports over South Korean TV this is thought to be a direct challenge to Ban Ki-moon’s new position at the UN - it’s a line in the sand if you will.

More at Hot Air, Wizbang.

UPDATE II: President Bush “Unacceptable”, and calls for the Security (cough) Council to repond.

Meanwhile…….

Our guys are are full-tilt boogy load up on our side of the fence along with our S. Korean counterparts.

Kim has been “tolerated” by China up to this point, but expect them to send “gentle notices” to the regime now. The last thing China wants now is juvenile delinquency on the part of Kim, screwing up their plans for down the road.

UPDATE III: Strong words from China! They are the key and they need to move quick as NK is possibly planning other tests

UPDATE IV: Security Council has condemned the action by unanimous vote, the North Korea rep stormed out.

UPDATE VII: Apparently the Kilotonage was greater than that orginally thought, in fact way way above - at between 5,000 and 15,000. Still, we need data and the best would be from satellite, with infared imaging such as here, reference to Pakistan’s test back in 1998, also see here.

UPDATE VIII: Some like Capt Ed are calling this a hoax, or “much about nothing”. While I agree Kim’s a blow-hard and the Russian - well, they’re the Russians, I would be cautious at this point. For instance, giving seimic readings a 4.2, wouldn’t be significant UNLESS you consider the area where detonation took place. You light a stick of dynamite in a bowl of jello you get a mess, you encase it in a tub of concrete not so much. The suspected area, near Hwaderi in NK were this took place is solid granite rock, therefore a subdued effect on the measurement.

UPDATE VIX: Incredible! The WAPO attempts to throw this in the lap of Bush as a “failure of foreign policy, BULLSHIT. Enter my friend, Charles R. Smith, back in 2003:

“The leftist media spin is that the current crisis in North Asia is the result of George W. Bush calling Pyongyang a member of the ‘axis of evil.’ In reality, the soft-line appeasement policy taken by Clinton against North Korea and China is what has led us to this point.

For example, former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, now serving as a talking head on CNN, claimed that the Clinton administration contained the threat from North Korea. Clearly, Mr. Begala missed the 1990s.

Of course, Mr. Begala simply forgot that Clinton’s military chief of staff testified in 1998 that North Korea did not have an active ballistic missile program. One week later the North Koreans launched a missile over Japan that landed off the Alaska coast.

During the early Clinton years, hard-liners and so-called conservative hawks advocated a pre-emptive strike to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons development before it could field an atomic bomb. Instead of taking the hard line, President Clinton elected to rely on former President Jimmy Carter and decided to appease the Marxist-Stalinist dictatorship.

Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and returned to America waving a piece of paper and declaring peace in our time. Kim, according to Carter, had agreed to stop his nuclear weapons development.

The Clinton appeasement program for North Korea included hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, food, oil and even a nuclear reactor. However, the agreement was flawed and lacked even the most informal means of verification.

In return, Kim elected to starve his people while using the American aid to build uranium bombs. The lowest estimate is that Kim starved to death over 1 million of his own people, even with the U.S. aid program.”

Kessler ought to quit his day job and work as a professional poster for the Kos. Tough talk does work, and we need to get tougher. But for the fact challenged MSM and left, Bush is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t and well, according to them he’s damned anyway. The fact is that (in spite of six years since the dog left office) we are still suffering the consequences of Clinton’s appeasing foriegn policy. The much touted (by Clintonites) Agreed Framework, was a dismal failure and nearly negligent move by the Clinton administration that was NEVER complied with by NK.

If Democrats get into power in November and beyond, bet this problem and others throughout the region will get a HELL of lot worse.