North Korea claimed it has the know how and capability to develop a nuclear warhead to equip ballistic missiles. This claim has bee substantiated today, by the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong-Un, presenting a complex spherical object claimed to be the country’s ministurised thermonuclear warhead.“The nuclear warheads have been standardised to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturising them,” Kim noted during a visit with nuclear technicians that was reported by the DPRK state media today. Kim also stressed that the miniaturised warheads were “thermo-nuclear” devices, echoing the North’s claim that the nuclear test it conducted in January was of a more powerful hydrogen bomb.
This is the first time Kim has directly claimed the breakthrough that experts see as a game-changing step towards a credible North Korean nuclear threat to the US mainland.
His comments came a day after the North’s powerful National Defence Commission threatened pre-emptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and the US mainland, as Seoul and Washington kicked off large-scale joint military exercises.
Military tensions have surged in the region since the North carried out its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month.
“His comments and the photos are making the message very explicit: ‘We have a nuclear weapon and you have to respect us’,” Melissa Hanham, another expert on North Korea’s weapons programme at MIIS, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) in California.
North Korea’s claim to have successfully tested an H-bomb in January was greeted with scepticism at the time as the estimated yield was seen as far too low for a full-fledged thermo-nuclear device.
However, weapons experts have suggested it may have been a “boosted” fission device, which makes more efficient use of nuclear material and can be made smaller without sacrificing yield.
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