By RICK GLADSTONE and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: March 7, 2013
Ignoring threats of retaliation, the United Nations Security Council ordered new economic sanctions against North Korea on Thursday for its third nuclear test last month, unanimously approving a resolution that the United States negotiated with China, the North's greatest protector.
In an angry response, North Korea said Friday that it was nullifying all agreements of nonaggression and denuclearization with South Korea and was cutting off the North-South hot line. But beyond those steps, it was unclear how, if at all, North Korea's young and untested leader, Kim Jong-un, would react to the rebuke. His government has threatened to terminate the 60-year-old armistice that brought a halt to the Korean War and that has kept a cold peace on the peninsula since, and South Korean officials said they were on the alert for any possible attack by the North.
Any military action, or response, could end up involving the American forces that have remained in South Korea as it has turned from war-ravaged ruin into one of the most advanced industrialized powerhouses.
The 15-to-0 Security Council vote places potentially painful new constraints on North Korean banking, trade and travel, pressures countries to search suspect North Korean cargo and includes new enforcement language absent from previous measures. But the provisions are in some ways less important than China's participation in writing them, suggesting that the country has lost patience with the neighbor it supported in the Korean War. While China's enforcement of sanctions on North Korea remains to be seen, it may now be more assertive.
"This is not about the words, it is about the music," said Christopher R. Hill, the former American diplomat who negotiated a deal with the North during the George W. Bush administration to dismantle its nuclear facilities — an accord that quickly collapsed. China's co-sponsorship of the resolution "suggests that after many years, the screws are beginning to turn," said Mr. Hill, now the dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
The United Nations vote came hours after North Korea, infuriated by the combination of the proposed resolution and annual joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States, threatened for the first time to carry out "a pre-emptive nuclear strike" on its enemies, of which the United States ranks first.
Military experts regarded that threat as bluster: While the North has conducted three underground nuclear tests, it is far from clear it knows how to deploy a nuclear weapon or make one small enough to fit atop a missile. But the threat still prompted the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, to respond that the United States was "fully capable" of defending itself.
Another nuclear test is possible, as is another ballistic missile launching or perhaps an armed provocation aimed at South Korea, where a new president, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of a former South Korean dictator who was known for taking a hard stand with the North, could be forced to respond. Some regarded the North's dire warnings as a signal that some military response was looming.
"The higher decibel of invective is a bit worrisome," said Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico and presidential candidate, who has traveled to North Korea eight times, most recently in January. "It's the highest negative level I've ever seen, and it probably means that the hard-line elements, particularly the military and not the Foreign Ministry, are in control."
On the other hand, Mr. Richardson said, "China is part of a significant sanctions effort, and this may cool the North Koreans down, may temper their response."
It is also possible that the new and isolated North Korean government may have misjudged the reaction to talk of a pre-emptive nuclear attack, wording rarely heard since the cold war ended. It could be another way in which the North is demanding talks with President Obama — only last week Mr. Kim told Dennis Rodman, the visiting former basketball star, that he wanted Mr. Obama to call him. But it could also be a way of saying that North Korea now expected to be treated the way Pakistan is: as an established, if formally unrecognized, nuclear power.
"This is a tactic they have employed when they don't get their way, when the international community brings more sanctions to bear," said Suzanne DiMaggio, vice president of global policy programs at the Asia Society in New York. "Whether that will happen this time is unclear, given the level of hostile rhetoric," she said. "I'm not sure Pyongyang recognizes that fact."
The United Nations vote and North Korea's threat come at a time when, internally, the Obama administration is debating the wisdom of its policy of essentially ignoring the North for the past four years, and responding to any provocations with new sanctions.
According to current and former administration officials, there is a growing discussion within the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon over whether Mr. Kim is using each new test of rockets and nuclear devices to solidify his position with the military, his most important single constituency. "Under that theory," one official who has dealt with North Korea often said recently, "even a firefight with the South Koreans might help him, as long as it doesn't escalate into something that threatens the regime."
In testimony on Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Glyn T. Davies, the administration's special representative for North Korea policy, argued that the best course was to continue with Mr. Obama's current policy of using tests and provocations to tighten sanctions, and try to starve development of the North's long-range missiles and its effort to design nuclear weapons small enough for those missiles.
Mr. Davies insisted that "it is still the goal of U.S. policy to achieve a Korean Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons."
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