WASHINGTON — North Korean officials bragged early Wednesday morning that it conducted a hydrogen bomb test.
U.S. officials are downplaying the claim.
Experts say while it may not have been a thermonuclear blast, which is exponentially more powerful than an atomic explosion, what happened is a critical development.
“What North Korea tested may be more powerful than anything it’s has tested to date and could be a step toward a hydrogen bomb,” former United Nations weapons inspector David Kay told WTOP.
He said it’s possible that they’ve actually managed to create a “boosted device.”
In this case, “that device may not be a pure thermonuclear device, or what is commonly called a hydrogen bomb, but something more moderate,” said Kay, now a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
There is nothing moderate about the carnage nuclear weapons can cause.
Almost 200,000 Japanese died in the late stages of World War II, after the U.S dropped two Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By comparison, the nuclear weapons North Korea has are much weaker. But the power of a hydrogen bomb “is exponentially greater than an atomic bomb,” said Joseph Detrani, president of the Daniel Morgan National Security Academy in Washington.
The real concern, Kay said, is North Korea’s stated quest to shrink a powerful nuclear device small enough to fit on the head of a long-range missile.
“Quite frankly,” said Kay, “if I was trying to miniaturize a nuclear device, a fission device, I would go for a small boosting.”
U.S. intelligence sources told WTOP just hours after the event, “Pyongyang consecutively issued two authoritative pronouncements; a Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee (CC) “historic order” and a government “statement,” stating that it had “successfully” conducted its first hydrogen bomb test at “1000 Pyongyang time.”
The statements said the test was aimed at defending itself from Washington’s “hostile” policy and nuclear threat.
The U.S. Geological Survey concurred that it detected a 5.1-magnitude seismic event at 10 a.m. local Pyongyang time in the northeast section of the country, about 30 miles northwest of Kilju city, which is very close to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.
The test appears to have been a warning to North Korea’s neighbors Japan, and South Korea; and particularly the U.S.
In a stream of statements shortly after the blast, The North Korean government said the test was aimed at defending itself from Washington’s “hostile” policy and nuclear threat.
North Korea is believed to have less than 20 nuclear weapons, but Kay said even though they’ve threatened to attack the U.S., in the past, the North Korean leadership is not looking for a nuclear war with the U.S.
“You don’t enter a nuclear exchange when you have one to maybe 15 with a country that counts them in the thousands and I don’t think the North Koreans are yet that suicidal,” said Kay.
The explosion triggered an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council out of concern that North Korea has a significant step forward in process called miniaturization, which is shrinking a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on the head of a missile.
While still investigating what happened, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters the “initial analysis” of the explosions was “not consistent” with North Korea’s claim that it successfully conducted hydrogen bomb tests.
Earnest rebuked the North Korean government, saying “their isolation has only deepened as they have sought to engage in increasingly provocative acts. These include not just nuclear tests but some of the ballistic missile tests.”
Whether it was a thermonuclear test may never be determined, Detrani said.
But he said it doesn’t matter. The damage has been done.
“Regardless of whether we get the particulars to say it was or it wasn’t, we know they are pursuing a Hydrogen bomb capability. That is in itself very, very significant, said Detrani.
As the world decried North Korea’s actions, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and Republic of Korea (ROK) Minister of National Defense Han Min-koo spoke by phone to discuss potential alliance responses to the test.
The Pentagon said in a statement that Carter and Han agreed the test was “an unacceptable and irresponsible provocation and is both a flagrant violation of international law and a threat to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the entire Asia-Pacific region.”
