North Korea, in its first formal statement since Monday's claimed atomic bomb test, hailed the blast as a success and said attempts by the outside world to penalize North Korea with sanctions would be considered an act of war.
"If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures," the statement [carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency], said without specifying what those measures could be.
North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam threatened in an interview with a Japanese news agency that there would also be more nuclear tests if Washington continued what he called its "hostile attitude."
Kim, second to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, told Kyodo News agency that further nuclear testing would hinge on U.S. policy toward his communist government.
"The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country," Kim Yong Nam was quoted as saying when asked whether Pyongyang will conduct more tests.
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