North Korea Claims to Have Developed a Missile-Ready Hydrogen Bomb

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Sunday that it has developed a hydrogen bomb “with super explosive power” to be mounted on its intercontinental ballistic missile.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency offered no evidence for the claim, other than photos of Kim Jong-un, the country’s leader, inspecting what it said was the weapon. The report said Mr. Kim had visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute, which the news agency said had recently “succeeded in a more developed nuke” and in “bringing about a signal turn in nuclear weaponization.”

“He watched an H-bomb to be loaded into new ICBM,” the news agency reported, without revealing when Mr. Kim’s visit took place.

The news agency’s photographs showed a sign saying that the bomb, if it was one, was meant for the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, which North Korea flight-tested twice in July.

In its fourth nuclear test, conducted in January 2016, North Korea claimed to have detonated its first hydrogen bomb. But most analysts disputed the claim, saying that the explosive yield was too small to be from such a device, which would be far more powerful than the atomic bombs it had previously tested.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

graphic
Can North Korea Actually Hit the United States With a Nuclear Weapon? AUG. 22, 2017
graphic
Why Experts Doubt That North Korea Tested a Hydrogen Bomb JAN. 6, 2016

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb JAN. 5, 2016
In North Korea’s second intercontinental ballistic missile test, on July 28, the Hwasong-14 demonstrated the potential to reach the lower 48 United States. But South Korean officials and analysts have said that North Korea has yet to master the so-called re-entry technology needed for a nuclear warhead to survive intense heat and friction as the missile plunges through the earth’s atmosphere from space.

On Sunday, the North Korean report said the hydrogen bomb had an explosive power adjustable from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons. It described the weapon as “a multifunctional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes” to launch an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack. An EMP attack can destroy electronic devices in a vast area of enemy territory.

Hours after the North’s announcement, the White House said in a statement that President Trump had discussed “the growing threat from North Korea” with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The statement did not say whether the conversation took place before or after the North Korean announcement.

Over the years, some nuclear experts have said that even if North Korea has not developed a true thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb, it may have increased the yield of a more traditional nuclear device by using tritium, a common enhancement technique.

A hydrogen bomb is a highly sophisticated weapon capable of achieving thousands of kilotons of explosive yield. In comparison, the last and most powerful of North Korea’s five nuclear tests, conducted in September 2016, produced an explosive yield of only 10 to 15 kilotons, about the same as the nuclear blast in Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II, according to officials and analysts.

“North Korea appears to have a family of relatively reliable, miniaturized fission weapons with the destructive force rivaling the size of the Hiroshima blast that can use plutonium or weapon-grade uranium and fit on a number of ballistic missiles,” David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said during congressional testimony last September.