North Korea tests nuclear bomb

The main thing that North Korea took from its founder and perennial supporter, the Soviet Union, was the propaganda power of dramatic images or actions. Where most countries limit saber-rattling to words, North Korea always preferred missile launches and weapons tests to speak for themselves. They have made no bones about a drive to acquire nuclear weapons capability for themselves, as a defensive measure in a region filled with much larger, nuclear-armed neighbors. After decades of efforts, interspersed with pauses due to sanctions and diplomatic agreements, they finally succeeded in achieving parity at least on those terms.

On this day, October 9, in 2006, North Korea detonated a small (less than one kiloton) nuclear weapon, becoming the eighth nation in the world known to possess nuclear weapons.

North Korea had been researching nuclear weapons on and off since the early 1980s, when American satellites detected the building of a large nuclear facility, which they claimed was for peaceful purposes only. From 1994 to 2003 North Korea suspended its work in exchange for U.S. concessions, but their resumption led to international sanctions — and international anguish that its non-nuclear neighbors, most notably Japan, would decide to arm themselves as well.