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Thank you for your summary. Just found info on the N.K. blast incident that offers another possibility:

An example of just how far the speculation goes: Some wonder whether it was possible that the three-to-four-kilometer-wide non-nuclear mushroom cloud, the first clue of the explosion last Thursday, was actually the result of a precision attack by either China or the US on these suspect sites, a prelude to the upcoming but still not scheduled six-party talks. The negotiations are aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program in return for security guarantees, alternative energy supplies and massive economic assistance.

With no radioactive fallout reported by any of North Korea's neighbors, nor from regional technologies designed to monitor such events, all indications are a conventional explosion of unconventional magnitude - similar to the Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB) the United States tested in the spring of 2003.

Designed to replace the Vietnam-era, 12,000-pound (5,440-kilogram) "Daisy Cutter" bomb, the US Air Force's new 22,000-pound (10,000kg), Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided MOAB, applied in multiples, could create a conventional explosion similar to that which has been described to have happened in North Korea. Tests of a single MOAB (those who witnessed it referred to it as the Mother of All Bombs) in 2003 showed that the weapon created a mushroom cloud that extended about three kilometers in the air, yet left a relatively small seismic signature. Of course, that MOAB tested in Florida was designed, as the name suggests, to burst above ground, but the crater - the missing North Korean mountain - suggests a ground or below detonation: subterranean force projection? The USAF includes "deeply buried targets" within the 10-tonne weapon's target range; it is a penetrating weapon capable of delivering the explosive power of 18,000 pounds (more than 8,000kg) of Tritonol to targets deep beneath the surface. (snip)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FI15Dg02.html

I have considered that, but I am not sure that any of our B-2 stealth bombers have been modified to carry such a beast and it is too big for an F-117. Any of our conventional bombers (B-52 or B-1) would have been detected. Origional design of the MOAB was to be kicked out the back of a C-130 with the main difference that the C-130 could be considerably higher than for the daisy cutter and with the bomb guidance, far more accurate.

Just what happened will be speculation for a while, however, I suspect another safety violation in their rocket fuel plant or munitions plant, all in the same vicinity.