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SEOUL, South Korea

American clear apprehension officials desire previously estimated that North Korea had harvested plenty fuel for six or in greater numbers bombs, be it so it has never been clear if it constructed the weapons. The scholar, Selig S. Harrison, said the officials had not defined what “weaponized” meant, but the implication was that they had built nuclear arms.

After the threats on Saturday, South Korea ordered its military to heighten vigilance by its heavily fortified border with North Korea, according to a spokesman with the South Korean military united chiefs of staff.

North Korea’s saber-rattling with regard to the South has increased in intensity since President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul a year ago, vowing to take a tougher stance on North Korea, reversing 10 years of his liberal predecessors’ efforts to promise the North with relating to housekeeping speed. But what made the threat on Saturday extraordinary, and more worrisome to some South Korean analysts, was the way it was delivered

“Strong military measures will come from our revolutionary armed force,” the spokesman, a colonel, said, according to Yonhap, South Korea’s national news agency, which monitors North Korean broadcasts.

Usually, the North Korean polity issues written statements that are delivered through the rough’s state-controlled media; sometimes the statements are read by press officers, not by means of a uniformed member of the military.

The spokesman warned of a clash along a disputed west. occidental sea border betwixt the Koreas. The sum of two units navies fought skirmishes there in 1999 and 2002.

It is always difficult to decipher the messages that North Korea’s reclusive government is trying to delegate with its oftentimes bombastic statements. In times of crucial bargaining, North Korea often tries to drive a wedge betwixt Washington and South Korea and raises the stakes by increasing demands and issuing dire threats.

With President-elect Barack Obama about to take office and negotiations more than the North’s nuclear program expected to resume, it is possible that the North is merely setting up its negotiating thesis.

But analysts said the North’s remarks could furthermore be an indication that it was intending to hold on to its arms despite an agreement it signed with five countries, including the United States in 2005, in which it committed to eventually giving up any nuclear weapons. The exact conditions under the load of which it would do so were left vague.

Questions over the freedom from disease of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Il, in addition involve any attempts to understand North Korea’s aims. In August, there were reports that Kim suffered a stroke, and since then rumors have swirled about whether he was still making important decisions.

Harrison, the scholar, presented North Korea’s claims of weaponization on Saturday in Beijing posterior returning from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang.

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