Don't be surprised if South Koreans suddenly rediscover that they loves America and are our closest ally. I say, let them handle the Nut of the North. The security of the South Korean ingrates is not worth the life of one American soldier.

CNN.com is quoting an unnamed US government official saying that it is not a nuke blast. Though it's old media so that should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

At this point I'm inclined to be skeptical toward any conclusion until we get more and better information.

I found it at Captain's Quarters here - and there's also a Yahoo! story

Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N. Korea

41 minutes ago

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea - A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea (news - web sites), sending a huge column of smoke into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday.

The South Korean government said it was trying to confirm the report of an explosion at 11 a.m. on Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China.

The Yonhap news agency carried conflicting reports from unidentified sources, with one in Washington saying the incident could be related to a natural disaster such as a forest fire. It also cited a diplomatic source in Seoul as raising the possibility of an accident or a nuclear test.

Although North Korea is believed to be developing nuclear weapons, international experts would likely have been able to detect the test if one had occurred several days ago.

"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5- to 4-kilometer (2.2 miles to 2.5 miles) in diameter was monitored during the explosion," the source in Seoul told Yonhap. Yonhap described the source as "reliable."

Thursday was the anniversary of North Korea's founding on Sept. 9, 1948. Leader Kim Jong Il uses the occasion to stage performances and other events to bolster loyalty among the impoverished North Korean population.

Experts have speculated that North Korea might use a major anniversary to conduct a nuclear-related test, but one analyst said an open test, as opposed to one below ground, would be hard in such a small country.

"It's difficult to say, but it won't be easy for North Korea to conduct a nuclear test without resulting in massive losses of its own people," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert in Seoul. "I think there is a more possibility that it is a simple accident, rather than a deliberate nuclear test."

Yonhap's diplomatic source in Seoul said the explosion took place "not far" from a military base that holds ballistic missiles. North Korea, which has a large missile arsenal and more than a million soldiers, is dotted with military installations.

The damage and crater left by the explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county was big enough to be noticed by a satellite, a source in Beijing told Yonhap.

After a National Security Council meeting, South Korea (news - web sites)'s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said the government was trying to confirm the report about the explosion. Asked about the possibility of a nuclear test, he said:

"I believe some foreign media made such reports. However, currently, we believe that it is not related to such reports."

On Saturday, North Korea said recent revelations that South Korea conducted secret nuclear experiments involving uranium and plutonium made the communist state more determined to pursue its own nuclear programs.

The South Korean experiments, conducted in 1982 and 2000, were likely to further complicate the already stalled six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the North's nuclear development. South Korea has said the experiments were purely for research and did not reflect a desire to develop weapons.

On April 22, train wagons at a railway station exploded in the North Korean town of Ryongchon, killing 160 people and injuring an estimated 1,300, according to some estimates. The blast was believed to have been sparked by a train laden with oil and chemicals that hit power lines.

The explosion on Thursday was bigger than the Ryongchon train explosion, which devastated a wide area, Yonhap said."

NY Times article

SFGate.com article

CNN seems to be the only one that is reporting "not a nuke" at the moment. However, some caution is probably called for at this point, since this is breaking news, and we should all know by now how that goes. I, for one, am kind of wondering why this hasn't broken until now. If it really was a nuclear detonation, the spy satellites that the US doubtless has tasked to the area should have picked up the gamma ray flash instantly.

I'm looking forward to the comments by various officials in the morning...

Forest fire that leaves a crater, huh? My ass.

Forest fire that manages to take the form of a mushroom cloud! Yeah, right.

My money is on that it's not a nuke test. Something tells me that if it were, we'd have heard about it before now (as the explosion took place on Thursday). At this point, who the hell knows. The Unification Minister gave a briefing this afternoon here in Seoul and said for now they feel it wasn't nuclear related, although he didn't say why. Basically, everyone is rushing to confirm what was said. The S. Korean media is full of speculation -- could have been a nuke, could have been a test of some other sort, could have been a major accident, might have been nothing at all. I read reports that those living on the other side of the Sino-Korean border didn't notice anything unsual, although they did point out that a mushroom cloud might have been obscured by the mountains. Interestingly enough, the Korean press is doing a lot of regurgitation of the foreign press, i.e., "The NYT reported....," which is ironic given that it was Yonhap that broke the story. That's another thing -- the Yonhap piece quoted a "Chinese source familiar with the North Korean situation," which in Korean, could mean anything. It also quoted other sources -- all living in China -- as saying they heard "rumors" of an explosion. I'm not saying something didn't happen, but until we get a nice satellite shot or a picture of a pretty mushroom cloud, I'd be very careful with this story at the moment.

I'll try to keep things going at my blog, too. When it's working, that is.

PS: To answer your question over at my blog, I doubt these leaks of S. Korean nuclear experiments had anything to do with suspicions concerning recent N. Korean moves. Frankly, the way that whole mess is playing out in Seoul, I don't think any planning went into it. It's just a mess, and embarrassing to everyone involved. Coincidentally, the North Koreans have been exceptionally harsh on Seoul following that news, and the Unification Minister's briefing concentrated more on N. Korea's reaction to S. Korea's nuclear experiments and the way it would influence the six-party talks than on the explosion in N. Korea. In fact, he hardly said anything about the later other than "We're trying to confirm what took place," and "We don't think it was a nuke test."

Some analysis here.

Yeah. They launch their liquid-fuelled rockets from there. Big bang, big fire.

This just in -- S. Korean gov't just confirmed explosion and mushroom cloud, said it was non-nuclear. Apparently three times larger than Ryongchon. Speculation is that it was an arms depot going up, as the area has a ton of munitions factories. I wouldn't be surprised if the North KOreans tried to launch a Daepodong and things didn't quite work out as well as they planned.

I'll link when the English version comes out.

Hey, maybe some CIA guys managed to arrange a little "accident" like the stunt they pulled with the Siberian pipeline network. (snicker) That's the problem with running a corrupt totalitarian Commie government: it's difficult to sort out foreign sabotage from the background noise of mind-numbing incompetence.

(Come to think of it, it's rather difficult to do that with ANY government.)

What to look for

It will take a bigger air blast for a given seismic reaction than with an underground blast. Of course tthe wave (pulse) in the atmosphere would be larger.

Mushroom cloud means an aboveground test. Aboveground means fallout. That means that people would be picking up the radioactivity. The Japanese would have seen it first. Then US detectors, and not just government ones.

I don't think everybody could sit on the info. Plus, the Chinese would freaked out since it was right on their border.

Articles say that this was at/near a North Korean missile base. They seem to be having problems with their missile program - they got detected hiding them under concrete bags on ships, that train blew up and killed all those Syrian missile techs. And now this.

What an entirely coincidental string of bad luck for NoKo missile guys.

Joe: We have operational sensors that test for Krypton 85 emmission, those would have radically elevated readings, the Chinese have them also-- I agree with Blaster that this was prob'ly conventional, given the timing. A 'celebratory' blast. The fall-out radius combined with the date argue against an accident.

This sounds like a major communist arms depot or rocket fuel factory going up.

The Soviet North Seas fleet lost it's primary weapons storage depot in the late 1980's when some of its ammunition went up either spontaniously or through incompetence and wiped out 80% of the North Seas Fleet's ammunition.

Being as the majority of it was things like torpedos, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and rockets. The Fleet never again achieved combat readiness before the Soviet Union fell.

The blast that happened at an American solid rocket plant in the late 1980s or early 1990's was near nuclear in size and it slowed Shuttle and TitanIV launches for six months due to a lack of solid rocket motor fuel.

Given what Scuds used as fuel, that mushroom cloud was likely pure poison made up of red fuming nitric acid and hydrazine.

Help us fight injustice in Iran. Please sign our petition opposing the death penalty for minors.

http://www.petitiononline.com/coceii/petition.html

Even though this wasn't a nuclear test, the increased level of suspicious activity recently is worrying - especially as there's likely to be a lull in U.S. policy initiative towards the DPRK before November. There's a bunch of links and history at my blog .

I'm guessing this is a conventional explosion. If the DPRK were testing their nukes, it would also be a display of their official entry into the Nuclear Club. With the test would be great proclamations, grandstanding, with every horn of the regime would be trumpeting their great triumph. That would be the point of a test. We saw this sort of thing when Pakistan tested their nukes.

Instead, none of that has occurred. Just silence.

TACITUS
http://betweenhopeandfear.blogspot.com/

Joe: Colin Powell on Meet the Press just said it was conventional. I have to wonder if lil Kim intended at least his civilian pop to believe it was nuclear.

The explosion Trent mentioned in the Soviet fleet may have been the 1984 explosion at Sevoromorsk, which involved the Red Banner Northern Fleet. Something about the rocket storage (propellants), and apparently it was major enough to look as big as a nuclear explosion.

To a previous poster, it is vaguely possible for a forest fire or other large fire to form a mushroom cloud. The cloud over Oakland, CA, on Oct. 20, 1991 around 11:15 am -- just as the Oakland Hills fire was really getting under way -- did look somewhat mushroom shaped from the angle I saw it from the north west (rainbow edges, no less). Difference of course is it didn't keep that shape and quickly expanded downwind.

I've got to wonder again if they had the retired CIA 'remote viewer' on the radio again(psyops 60's)who has predicted the end of the earth from asteroids after the new shuttle program is started(post crash). He predicts big explosion on border and I'll be damned if it happens a week later. Its not the nuclear border defense,but a train full of fuel for the winter. They probably still need a replacement.

As far as seeing the future, I think the TV at the UN works better and you don't have to worry about the making sure there is a mistake(i.e.Lucifer type stuff) in time, etc.

Anyway, I thought these famous bloggers would have an answer by now...........

Joe: The Krypton 85 sensors on the borders can detect underground tests and increased uranium enrichment activity as well.

I recall reading on one of the Korean blogs that defectors have said there is a resistance movement in NoKo. Maybe they are responsible.

Witnesses in South Korea saw a huge mushroom-shaped cloud and felt tremors. A satellite showed a substantial crater in the ground. Yet Colin Powell is not sure that North Korea was testing a nuke??!
Check out my opinion of it on my blog.

Tom

Uh... nobody in South Korea saw any mushroom clouds or felt any tremors unless they were on mushrooms themselves. This story broke here in Seoul the same day it broke in the rest of the world -- five days after the explosion. In fact, they are having trouble getting witnesses from the town just across the border in China who saw a mushroom cloud.

I'm not sure which story you got that from, but when the Korean versions say the South Koreans detected a cloud, they are referring to satellite imagery and other methods, not with the naked eye.

This just in -- BBC reported that NK Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun explained to visiting UK Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell that the explosion was a planned demolition of a mountain linked to the planned construction of a hydroelectric power station.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3650702.stm

Nice of them to say something, at least.

How do you demolish a mountain, except with a nuke?

Immediately prior to a North Korean nuclear test would be a grand time to drop a couple or three MOABs.

I suspect a counterforce first strike.

Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part....

Whitehall: it is. Old Persian saying: never wound a king.

South Korea is effectively complicit in propping up North Korea's regime at the moment, and will not help in any way. American troops in Korea are based in range of North Korean artillery. Worst-case planning says that a strike on North Korea = loss of those troops, and loss of any U.S. presence in Korea too. Which means a Korea that falls into China's orbit (this is China's current goal, and helps explain why they continue to be the NK regime's biggest backers - as well as why the USA hasn't just left).

Anything you do has to have an effect that justifies those potential losses, as well as the political blowback.

And now, FWIW, the North Koreans say the blast was the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project.

Interesting comment in the story about it having a "ring of truth" to it. Last time we heard about a ring and a mountain, it was fantasy, but -- we'll see, won't we?

I don't condemn misile tests, if any by Korea, because a country has the right to make its defence stronger by inventing new misiles.

I guess there should be no objection if Korea is testing new missiles because every country has the rights to defend its territories.

China is key, literally.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=13&no=321523&rel_no=1