North Korea test more worrying than Indo-Pak blasts: Analysts

South Koreans watch a television broadcasting North Korea's nuclear test at a railway station in Seoul yesterday. Defying worldwide appeals and threats of sanctions, North Korea announced it had carried out its first nuclear weapons test and called it a "historic event.". PHOTO: AFP

In May 1998 a South Asian apocalypse suddenly seemed a possibility after the two rival nations carried out tit-for-tat tests -- the last nuclear explosions until now.

News bulletins at the time showed footage of a barren yellow mountain in remote southwestern Pakistan shuddering with the sheer force of simultaneous detonations deep below the earth.

Yet the situation now is more serious, analysts said, particularly as Pyongyang may have learned lessons from Pakistan, whose disgraced nuclear hero provided North Korea with atomic secrets.

"I would say that this is much more significant," analyst and retired Pakistani Army General Talat Masood told AFP.

"In 1998 it was much more India-Pakistan specific, but the North Korean test means US nuclear hegemony in East Asia has collapsed, the counter-proliferation policy by the US has collapsed and their axis of evil policy has collapsed," he said.

Mainly Hindu India carried out its first nuclear test in secret in 1974. It had already fought three wars with Muslim-majority Pakistan since independence from Britain and their subsequent partition in 1947.

In 1998 New Delhi followed up by detonating five warheads beneath the Rajasthan desert between May 11 and 13.

Pakistan came under huge international pressure not to follow suit but it exploded five bombs in Baluchistan province on May 28 and another two days later.

The two countries became the world's sixth and seventh declared nuclear powers respectively, while Pakistan also emerged as the only nation in the Islamic world with the bomb.

"It's a formidable challenge for a country after they have detonated," said analyst Masood. "There is fear of the unknown, as to how the world will react, what the consequences are, what the sanctions will be."