North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un has said his country has developed a hydrogen bomb, although military observers have scoffed at the claim.
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“The state managed to become a powerful nuclear power capable of defending its sovereignty and national dignity by mighty nuclear and hydrogen strikes”, KCNA news quoted Kim as saying.
Experts will assess and debate North Korea’s latest nuclear claim, but the regime already poses a serious and growing nuclear threat to the United States and its allies.
“We do not believe that North Korea, which has not succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear bombs, has the technology to produce an H-bomb”, an intelligence official told Yonhap.
The U.S. State Department repeated a call on North Korea to comply with its global obligations and abandon all nuclear weapons.
Last year, the Security Council held its first-ever meeting on the North’s human rights issue after the adoption of a landmark U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for referring the communist nation to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
To this day, the USA is the only country to have used nuclear bombs in war.
An official at South Korea’s intelligence agency told Yonhap news agency there was no signs that the North considered Kim was speaking, and had hydrogen bomb capability.
“I don’t even think they’re there yet”, Albright said of the North Koreans. Jo, who lost her six brothers and sisters to starvation, said that her father was also arrested and tortured by North Korean authorities “because he illegally traveled to China to find food and returned to our country”.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North and South Korea on Friday held high-level talks at a North Korean border town, a small step meant to improve ties battered by a military standoff in August and decades of acrimony and bloodshed. And, he said, there is enough unclassified research out there that North Korea may have figured out how to boost its yields without conducting tests.
Other experts and neighbors also reacted to the North Korean claims with caution.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Wednesday that China would like to continue to developing friendly ties with its neighbour.
China is a close ally of desperately poor and reclusive North Korea.
Earlier this year, it said it had successfully minaturised a nuclear warhead to mount on a ballistic missile – a claim disputed by USA and South Korean experts.
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Efforts to establish a regular dialogue have tended to falter rapidly after an initial meeting – a reflection of the deep mistrust between two countries that have remained technically at war since the end of the 1950-53 Korean conflict. He cites the absence of a single test to prove their claim is true and shares his belief that Kim’s goal was to gain recognition from the worldwide community as a nuclear state.
