North Korea said it successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen nuclear bomb yesterday, claiming a significant advance in its strike capability and setting off alarm bells in Japan and South Korea.
The test, the fourth time the isolated state has exploded a nuclear device, was ordered by young leader Kim Jong-Un and successfully conducted at 10am local time (0130 GMT), North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said.
“Let the world look up to the strong, self-reliant nuclear-armed state,” Kim wrote in what North Korean state TV displayed as a handwritten note.
South Korean intelligence officials and several analysts questioned whether Wednesday’s explosion was indeed a full-fledged test of a hydrogen device.
But the reported nuclear test drew condemnation abroad, including from China and Russia, North Korea’s two main allies.
China expressed “resolute opposition” and said it would lodge a protest with Pyongyang.
No countries were given advance warning of a nuclear test, South Korea’s intelligence service said, according to lawmakers briefed by intelligence officials.
In previous such tests, Pyongyang had notified China, Russia and the United States beforehand, they said.
While a fourth nuclear test had been long expected, the claim that it was a hydrogen device, much more powerful than an atomic bomb, came
as a surprise, as did the timing.
It ensures that North Korea will be a key topic during the US presidential campaign, and Republican candidate Marco Rubio blamed North Korea’s nuclear activities on President Barack Obama’s “failed” foreign policy.
Rubio’s rival Donald Trump said the onus was on China to solve what he called the North Korean “problem”, and if it did not, the United States “should make trade very difficult for China.”
North Korea has long coveted diplomatic recognition from Washington, but sees its nuclear deterrent as crucial to ensuring the survival of its third-generation dictatorship.
“With Iran being off the table, the North Koreans have placed themselves at the top of the foreign policy agenda as far as nation-states who present a threat to the US”, said Michael Madden, an expert on the country’s
secretive leadership.
The device had a yield of about 6 kilotonnes, according to the office of a South Korean lawmaker on the parliamentary intelligence committee - roughly the same size as the North’s last test, which was equivalent to 6-7 kilotonnes of TNT.
“Given the scale, it is hard to believe this is a real hydrogen bomb,” said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum.
“They could have tested some middle stage kind (of device) between an A-bomb and H-bomb, but unless they come up with any clear evidence, it is difficult to trust their claim.”
Joe Cirincione, a nuclear expert who is president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security organisation, said North Korea may have mixed a hydrogen isotope in a normal atomic fission bomb.
“Because it is, in fact, hydrogen, they could claim it is a hydrogen bomb,” he said. “But it is not a true fusion bomb capable of the massive multi-megaton yields these bombs produce”.
The United States Geological Survey reported a 5.1 magnitude quake that South Korea said was 49 km (30 miles) from the Punggye-ri site where the North has
conducted nuclear tests in the past.
North Korea’s last test of an atomic device, in 2013, also registered at 5.1 on the USGS scale.
The test nevertheless may mark an advance of North Korea’s nuclear technology. The claim of miniaturising, which would allow the device to be adapted as a weapon and placed on a missile, would also pose a new threat to the United States and its regional allies, Japan and South Korea.
The North’s previous miniaturisation claims have not been independently verified. Many experts also doubt whether the North possesses missile technology capable of reliably delivering a warhead to the continental United States.