A BIG bang in the mountains of North Korea, combined with intelligence reports about suspicious activity at other sites, has triggered a fresh bout of nerves about the communist republic’s nuclear ambitions.
The North Korean government says that the explosion on 9 September near Yongjo-ri, close to the border with China, demolished a mountain to make way for a large hydroelectric scheme. And the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, accepts “there was no indication that there was a nuclear event of any kind”.
But speculation that the country could still become the eighth to test a nuclear weapon has…
