HONOLULU -- North Korea announced on Tuesday that it "will, in the future, conduct a nuclear-weapons test," promising that it will be done under conditions where "safety is firmly guaranteed." While Pyongyang did not say when this test would occur, it made it clear that it felt compelled to take such action because of "the U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure."
Should we take this threat seriously? North Korea has threatened such action before, although only in private. A public threat such as this is difficult to ignore (although many will try to do just that). Some will speculate that this is merely another attention-getting device (Iran-envy?), and this may be at least partially true. It may also be aimed at drawing attention from an imminent South Korean success story -- the anticipated selection of South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon to be Kofi Annan's successor as U.N. Secretary General. Examples of previous attempts by North Korea to get attention and/or to upstage the South are too numerous to recount here.
Pyongyang may be bluffing, hoping that this will force Washington to lift its financial restrictions against North Korea's counterfeiting and money-laundering operations or at least accept bilateral negotiations on the nuclear issue -- to date, Washington has said it would only meet the North bilaterally within the context of the broader six-party talks (also involving South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia).