North Korea stands out as the only country to have conducted a nuclear test in the 21st century, pushing it into further isolation from the rest of the world, the head of an agency tasked with monitoring the main nuclear-test-ban treaty said Tuesday.

“Each test is creating a problem for the DPRK and this is the choice of the DPRK,” said Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). DPRK is the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea has been under extensive economic sanctions since it conducted two nuclear tests at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon in 2006 and 2009. Moreover, the explosions have created security challenges on the regional and global levels, Toth said.

More than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out between 1945 and 1996, in countries such as the United States, the Soviet Union and France, but that number dropped to two in the last 10 years, both coming in North Korea, according to the CTBTO.

“I call it two too many,” Toth told Yonhap News Agency on the sidelines of a disarmament conference on this southern resort island of Jeju. “There were only two unfortunate ones, but it means that compared to 400-500 (per decade), this is how this treaty and monitoring system and norm managed to keep the genie in the bottle.”

The CTBTO is tasked with promoting the treaty, signed by 182 countries since its launch in 1996, and ensuring that no nuclear test goes undetected. (Yonhap News)

The pact has not yet entered into force because it has yet to be signed and ratified by all of the 44 specific nuclear technology holder countries, including the United States, North Korea and China.

The organization detects shockwaves in the earth, sound waves in the ocean and radioactive particles in the air from nearly 400 monitoring facilities around the world, testing for signs of nuclear explosions. It was through these methods that the CTBTO was able to inform its member states of North Korea’s two nuclear tests within two hours after they had taken place, before they were announced by Pyongyang.

Toth urged non-member states and countries like the U.S. and China that have yet to ratify the treaty to consider their own security interests.

“It’s up to those countries to assess whether their security is better served without rules or with rules,” he said. “I’m convinced that, as in trade, currencies and finance, it’s better to have a rule-based environment, which is underpinning international cooperation.” 

(Yonhap News)