North Korea test-fires two short-range missiles

North Korea Tuesday fired two short-range missiles, one day after staging a nuclear test, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

The North launched one ground-to-air and one ground-to-ship missile into the sea off its east coast near the city of Hamhung, it quoted a South Korean government source as saying.

"Intelligence authorities are analyzing the motives for the firing," the source was quoted as saying, adding each missile had a range of 130 kilometers (81 miles).

North Korea, condemned by the international community for its latest nuclear test, accused the United States of being hostile towards the communist country.

In a move likely to heighten tension in the region, South Korea, which previously stayed out of the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) in order to pursue reconciliation efforts with North Korea, set aside its reservations and announced it would join the pact immediately, something Pyongyang has warned it would consider a declaration of war.

Our army and people are fully ready for battle ... against any reckless U.S. attempt for a pre-emptive attack

North Korean NCNA news agency

The program involves stopping and searching ships suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, materials to make them, or missiles to deliver them.

Monday's nuclear test, the North's second after one in 2006, drew a sharp rebuke from regional powers, and U.S. President Barack Obama called Pyongyang's atomic arms program a threat to international security.

Underlining concerns over how far the North might be prepared to raise the stakes, Obama assured South Korean President Lee Myung-bak of Washington's unequivocal commitment to his country's defense on the long-divided peninsula where some two million troops are stationed.

Condemnation

Pyongyang said the United States was being hostile, its long-held argument to justify efforts to build a nuclear arsenal that years of international negotiations have failed to block.

"Our army and people are fully ready for battle ... against any reckless U.S. attempt for a pre-emptive attack," the North's KCNA news agency said.

In a unanimous statement adopted just hours after the nuclear blast, the U.N. Security Council decided to start work immediately on a new resolution, condemning the test as a "clear violation" of a previous resolution banning such tests in 2006.

"The members of the Security Council have decided to start work immediately on a Security Council resolution on this matter," said the nonbinding statement read after a closed-door meeting by Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.

The North also fired off three short-range missiles from its east coast missiles bases on Monday.

The North's nuclear test has drawn outrage in the South, which is still mourning Saturday's apparent suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun.

It is also bound to raise concerns about proliferation, a major worry of the United States which has in the past accused Pyongyang of trying to sell its nuclear know-how to states such as Syria.

Russia said the blast was about equal in power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in World War Two. That bomb had an explosion of about 20 kilotons. Other estimates said the North's nuclear device had a lower yield.

One kiloton equals 1,000 tons and indicates the explosive yield of about that much weight of TNT.

North Korea was under a Security Council resolution that banned activities related to nuclear and ballistic missile tests and subject to sanctions imposed under that 2006 resolution.

The members of the Security Council have decided to start work immediately on a Security Council resolution on this matter

Security Council nonbinding statement