China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on June 1967.
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The test was met with a burst of jubilation and pride in Pyongyang.
Political analysts highlight that this decision by the South Korean government is clearly a response to North Korea’s underground nuclear test earlier this week.
And it contains a telling clue to the mindset behind what has become the biggest story in Asia: North Korea’s surprise and disputed claim to have tested its first hydrogen bomb.
In Seoul and elsewhere there was high-level worry.
Meanwhile, Japan’s President Shinzo Abe called the test “a serious threat to our nation’s security and absolutely can not be tolerated”. “We believe in principle that it could be possible”, he says.
The nuclear age is has entered its eighth decade, and while relatively few nations possess the power, the potential consequences of North Korea upping its nuclear game from a basic atomic bomb to a hydrogen bomb has caught the world’s attention.
But underlying everything is Beijing’s desire to keep North Korea as a buffer between it and the prospect of U.S. troops stationed on its border in a unified Korea.
Codenamed “Operation Grapple” UK’s first successful Hydrogen weapon test in October 1957. An atomic bomb uses nuclear fission, or the splitting of atoms, to create its energy.
“If there was ever a moment for the Chinese to decide that now is the time that we really have to do something, this is it”, said Mike Chinoy, former CNN global correspondent and the author of “Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis”.
The U.S Geological Survey measured the magnitude of the seismic activity at 5.1 on its website.
South Korea said on Thursday it was imposing partial restrictions on entry to a joint industrial complex in North Korea, a day after the hermit kingdom shocked the world with its fourth nuclear test. That’s only a fraction of the hundreds of kilotons that a successful H-bomb test would usually yield.
So what exactly is a hydrogen bomb?
Diplomatic engagement has failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
“What thermonuclear weapons do is increase the potential yield by enormous amounts. That’s what the Americans did; that’s what the Russians did”.
Relations between Pyongyang and Beijing have been frosty since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father as dictator, promptly purging several key government figures – such as his uncle Jang Song Thaek – with strong ties to China.
It took about 55 days after the last test to be able to determine the exact nature of it, our correspondent says.
U.S. Air Force aircraft created to detect the evidence of a nuclear test, such as radioactive particulate matter and blast-related noble gases, could be deployed from a U.S. base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. “But maybe we’ll be lucky”.
South Korea, technically in a state of war against the North, said it was not considering a nuclear deterrent of its own, despite calls from ruling party leaders.
The last sanctions resolution in 2013 was co-sponsored by the United States and China, and both countries will be key to an agreement on a new one.
“We are anxious about how things are developing”, the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a briefing. Apart from providing material assistance, that includes defending North Korea from condemnation at the United Nations over its human rights abuses and designating refugees from the North as economic migrants rather than asylum seekers. “Nuclear weapons are not the solution to its domestic woes”. But the debate is growing on just how far the North has advanced.
“For Beijing, a nuclear armed North Korea is uncomfortable and disturbing”, she said.
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As a member country of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, South Korea is prohibited from having a nuclear arsenal.
