North Koreans watch a news broadcast on a video screen outside Pyongyang Railway Station on Wednesday. (AP/Kim Kwang Hyon)
Soon after the ground shook around its nuclear testing facility, North Korea trumpeted its first hydrogen bomb test, but others were skeptical. The UN called an emergency meeting.
By: AP and World Israel News Staff
Following reports by the US Geological Service of a magnitude-5.1 earthquake 30 miles from North Korea’s nuclear testing site, Pyongyang celebrated what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb test that would mark a major and unanticipated advance for its still-limited nuclear arsenal.
A self-proclaimed “H-bomb of justice” test likely pushed Pyongyang’s scientists and engineers closer to their goal of building a warhead small enough to place on a missile that can reach the U.S. mainland. But South Korea’s spy agency thought the estimated explosive yield from the explosion was much smaller than what even a failed H-bomb detonation would produce.
The test on Wednesday was met with a burst of jubilation and pride in Pyongyang. A North Korean television anchor, reading a typically propaganda-heavy statement, said a test of a “miniaturized” hydrogen bomb had been a “perfect success” that elevated the country’s “nuclear might to the next level.”
A large crowd celebrated in front of Pyongyang’s main train station as the announcement was read on a big video screen, with people taking videos or photos of the screen on their mobile phones while applauding and cheering.
Kim Sok Chol, 32, told The Associated Press that he doesn’t know much about H-bombs, but “since we have it the U.S. will not attack us.”
University student Ri Sol Yong, 22, said, “If we didn’t have powerful nuclear weapons, we would already have been turned into the slaves of the U.S.”
North Korea’s state media stood firm in saying the test was a self-defense measure against a potential U.S. attack. “The (country’s) access to H-bomb of justice, standing against the U.S., the chieftain of aggression …, is the legitimate right of a sovereign state for self-defense and a very just step no one can slander.”
North Korean President Park Geun-Hye (AP/Lee Jin-man)
In Seoul and elsewhere, there was high-level worry. South Korean President Park Geun-hye ordered her military to bolster its combined defense posture with U.S. forces. She called the test a “grave provocation” and “an act that threatens our lives and future.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “We absolutely cannot allow this.”
Washington and nuclear experts have been skeptical regarding past North Korean claims about H-bombs, which are much more powerful and much more difficult to make than atomic bombs. A confirmed test would further worsen already abysmal relations between Pyongyang and its neighbors and lead to a strong push for tougher sanctions on North Korea at the United Nations. The Security Council was holding an emergency meeting.
Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft, says the meeting will aim to agree on a statement condemning the nuclear test and follow up with a new resolution expanding sanctions against North Korea. He told reporters, “the Security Council needs to be clear in its condemnation and robust in its response.”
A successful H-bomb test would be a big advance in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Fusion is the main principle behind the hydrogen bomb, which can be hundreds of times more powerful than atomic bombs that use fission. In a hydrogen bomb, radiation from a nuclear fission explosion sets off a fusion reaction responsible for a powerful blast and radioactivity.
A South Korean lawmaker said the country’s spy agency told him in a private briefing that Pyongyang may not have conducted an H-bomb test given the relatively small size of the seismic wave reported.
“I’m pretty skeptical,” said Melissa Hanham, senior researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, California. “The seismic data indicates it would be very small for a hydrogen test.
‘North Korea has always defied expectations’
“It seems just too soon to have this big technical achievement,” she said. “But North Korea has always defied expectations.”
While also noting the quake was likely too small for an H-bomb test, Jaiki Lee, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul’s Hanyang University, said the North could have experimented with a “boosted” hybrid bomb that uses some nuclear fusion fuel along with more conventional uranium or plutonium fuel.
Joel Wit, founder of the North Korea-focused 38 North website, said a boosted bomb “is the most likely option,” while adding that he isn’t surprised that North Korea has shifted focus to hydrogen weaponry.
“Every nuclear power essentially moves down the same track as they develop nuclear weapons,” he said. “And that track is miniaturization, but also increasing the yield of nuclear weapons. That’s what the Americans did; that’s what the Russians did.”
It could take weeks before the true nature of the test is confirmed by outside experts — if they are able to do so at all.
Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a physicist, scientist-in-residence and professor at the James Martin Center, said it may not be possible for the monitors to ever determine if Wednesday’s explosion was caused by a hydrogen bomb.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters that Beijing “firmly opposes” Pyongyang’s purported test and is monitoring the environment on its border with North Korea near the test site.
Just how big a threat North Korea’s nuclear program poses is a mystery. North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs.
“This is indeed a wakeup call,” Lassina Zerbo, the head of the Vienna-based U.N. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which has a worldwide network of monitoring stations to detect nuclear testing, told AP by phone.