“Thanks to tireless efforts by his late grandfather, Kim Il-sung, founder of the nation”.
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Lee Chun-geun, a senior fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, told Yonhap that while it’s hard to assess the validity of the remark, it is technically difficult for North Korea to develop hydrogen bombs.
“We are closely monitoring and tracking any and all of North Korea’s nuclear activities”. Worldwide experts are sceptical of Kim’s claim, even though North Korea successfully conducted underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
North Korea is likely to call on Seoul to resume a joint tour programme at Mount Kumgang in the North, which has been suspended since 2008 following the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist. “I think that’s virtually impossible”, said Daniel Pinkston, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear weapons now at Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un looks out towards Kim Il-Sung square during a mass military parade in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015.
The report appears to carry the young ruler’s first public mention of a hydrogen bomb, a technology Pyongyang is believed to have been striving to acquire, but yet to master. This time, they’re claiming that they’ve developed a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear weapon that would theoretically make them a legitimate nuclear power.
North Korea has hinted that it has built a hydrogen bomb to “defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation”, a development that, if true, would mark an alarming step in its nuclear capabilities.
But Lassina Zerbo, of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, said: “I’m tempted to believe it’s just a bluff to put pressure on the worldwide community to resume discussion with them”.
The band will play alongside another North Korean musical troupe, the State Merited Chorus, at the National Center for Performing Arts for three nights starting Thursday. As president of the Security Council during December, the United States can draw attention to the COI report and work to generate support from UN Member States for the Security Council to revisit North Korea’s grave human rights abuses.
The situation on the Korean peninsula “is still complex and fragile”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.
North Korea’s government severely restricts religious freedom and harshly punishes individuals attempting to practice their faith outside of the small number of officially recognized groups.
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Besides, one can deem topical the assessment of North Korean nuclear potential made by US servicemen three years ago.
