News Digest

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s hydrogen bomb claim draws scepticism

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared on Thursday to claim the country has developed a hydrogen bomb, a step up from the less powerful atomic bomb, but outside experts were sceptical. Kim made the comments as he toured the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site, which marks the feats of his father who died in 2011 and his grandfather, state founder and eternal president, Kim Il Sung, the official KCNA news agency said. A hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear bomb, uses more advanced technology to produce a significantly more powerful blast than an atomic bomb.

(The work of Kim Il Sung) turned the DPRK into a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency

North Korea conducted underground tests to set off nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013, for which it has been subject to U.N. Security Council sanctions banning trade and financing activities that aid its weapons programme. An official at South Korea’s intelligence agency told Yonhap news agency that there was no evidence that the North had hydrogen bomb capacity, and believed Kim was speaking rhetorically. North Korea claimed in 2010 that it had successfully developed fusion technology. The North has also boasted to have succeeded in miniaturisation of a nuclear warhead to mount on a ballistic missile, a claim disputed by U.S. and South Korean experts.

I think it’s unlikely that they have an H-bomb at the moment, but I don’t expect them to keep testing basic devices indefinitely, either.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey