Mr Kim said on Wednesday his country had miniaturised nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles and ordered improvements in the power and precision of its arsenal in his first direct comment about nuclear warhead miniaturisation.
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“This can be called a true nuclear deterrent”, Kim was quoted as saying by the North’s KCNA news agency.
While the North has boasted of mastering miniaturisation before, this is the first time Mr Kim has directly claimed the breakthrough that experts see as a game-changing step towards a credible North Korean nuclear threat to the United States mainland.
Shortly after the launch, Pyongyang announced it “nullifies” all inter-Korean cooperative projects and will liquidate South Korean assets in the country.
The North Korean statement called South Korea’s unilateral sanctions “laughable, unsightly” behavior, and referred to South Korea’s female president, Park Geun-hye, as an “American prostitute”, the latest in a series of crude sexist attacks on her.
“We are aware of the report out of North Korea”.
North Korea has been “effective in evading sanctions” by continuing to engage in banned trade, “facilitated by the low level of implementation of Security Council resolutions by Member States”, the Panel of Experts said, according to Reuters.
The South suspended the tours in 2008 after a North Korean soldier shot dead a female tourist from the South who strayed into a restricted zone.
The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried photos on its front page showing Kim and nuclear scientists standing beside what outside analysts say appears to be a model warhead part – a small, silverish globe with a ballistic missile or a model ballistic missile in the background.
North Korea’s development of smaller nuclear weapons and long-range missiles has always been a matter of concern and could shake up the security balance in Asia.
South Korean and US officials believe that North Korea has likely made some advances in trying to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, but that there is no proof it has mastered the technology.
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With the exception of Kaesong, economic cooperation between North and South effectively ended in 2010 after a South Korean naval corvette was sunk by what Seoul said was a North Korean submarine.
