“Only a few countries including the USA and Russian Federation have conducted hydrogen bomb tests and the size of the detonations reached 20 to 50 megatons”.
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It has unnerved its neighbors South Korea and Japan and prompted an emergency meeting on Wednesday of the UN Security Council in NY.
Doubts remain, however, over whether North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb as it claims.
Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States and nations around the world have unequivocally condemned North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
South Korea’s meteorological agency said it detected an artificial quake 30 miles (49km) from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted previous tests.
President Barack Obama also reaffirmed the “unshakeable USA commitment” to the security of South Korea and Japan, according to White House statements describing separate calls between Obama, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan.
“All of this depends on the appetite of the council, particularly the Chinese position”, he said. Then, for four years led a U.S delegation of the Six Party Talks trying to denuclearize North Korea. They get their explosive power from the splitting, or fission, of heavy elements like uranium and plutonium.
Ban Ki-moon makes comments to the media on the situation in North Korea Jan. 6.
Castle Romeo was an American hydrogen bomb test in March 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The birthdays of leaders in North Korea are always celebrated with a lot of fanfare, although this was more true of Kim Il Sung, the founding president and the current leader’s grandfather, and of Kim Jong Il, the second in the dynasty.
Observers agree a nuclear explosion of some kind took place and it seems to have been a bit bigger than the last test in 2013, but not almost big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion – an “H-bomb” – as Pyongyang claims. Our country, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, will take resolute measures by coordinating efforts with the USA, S Korea, China. “We still don’t know if they do have that capability”.
“We didn’t want to overestimate the program or give them too much credit”, another official said.
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North Korea is thought to possess a handful of crude nuclear weapons and has long pushed for an arsenal of warheads that can be mounted on a ballistic missile.
