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South Korea has been accelerating efforts to ramp up its military capabilities in the face of a torrent of nuclear weapons tests by North Korea, which on Sept. 3 conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after the nuke test, Seoul announced it reached an agreement with Washington to remove the warhead weight limits on South Korean ballistic missiles, which under a bilateral guideline could be built for a maximum range of 800 kilometers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A preemptive strike against Pyongyang\u2019s leadership would be difficult to undertake, but it\u2019s widely seen as the most realistic of the limited military options Seoul has to deny a nuclear attack from its rival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The North said its latest nuclear test was a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles that were flight tested twice in July. The country is also developing solid-fuel missiles that could be fired from land mobile launchers or submarines. It flew a powerful new midrange missile over northern Japan last month while declaring more missile tests targeting the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, South Korea said it found a small amount of radioactivity in air samples collected days after the North\u2019s test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said the discovery of the xenon-133 isotope is linked to the recent test, but it couldn\u2019t verify exactly what kind of bomb was detonated because several other isotopes that typically accompany a nuclear explosion were not found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those isotopes could show if the bomb tested on Sept. 3 was a plutonium or uranium device, according to the South Korean agency. It said it also hasn\u2019t found traces of tritium, which accompany a test of a thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea did a poor job obscuring its first nuclear test in 2006, when xenon and krypton isotopes detected in the atmosphere allowed scientists to conclude that the country had used a plutonium-fueled device. The country has since improved the design of its nuclear tests to make radioactivity less detectable from a distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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