A South Korean intelligence official said Kim’s words were nothing more than “rhetoric” for domestic consumption.
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Huang Youfu, a Korean studies professor at Minzu University of China, said the Republic of Korea and the USA may consider strengthening their cooperation to curb the DPRK’s nuclear capability.
“I am certain the day will come when we will see North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un stand trial at the ICC”, says Ahn Myung Chul, a former prison guard.
“North Korea threatens global peace and security by expanding its nuclear program and continuing its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons”, Adam J. Szubin, acting undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement.
Kim said the bomb would be detonated “to reliably defend the sovereignty and dignity of the nation”, according to the official [North] Korean Central News Agency.
The atomic bomb – the type dropped by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II – produces a fission reaction, in which a neutron collides with an atom’s nucleus, splitting it into two smaller nuclei and releasing energy.
North Korea has hinted before at the possession of “stronger, more powerful” weapons, but Kim’s remarks were believed to be the first direct reference to an H-bomb.
“North Korea is a close neighbor of China”. Hwang Jang-yop, who used to be secretary of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party before fleeing the country, reported that the country had been in fact researching nuclear fusion and atomic weapons from a long time ago.
“There are a lot of issues to discuss between the South and North. [We] will do our best to resolve them one at a time, step by step”, Hwang said before leaving for Kaesong. The UN General Assembly sent a similar message last month, when 112 countries voted in favor a resolution condemning abuses in North Korea and urged the UN Security Council to consider referral to the ICC.
Senior government officials from the two Koreas met Friday in an effort to ease bilateral tensions that have repeatedly threatened to spill over into a resumption of the 1950-53 Korean War.
The United Nations Security Council will discuss the human rights situation in North Korea on Thursday, as defectors and victims of torture complain that not enough has been done since the publication of a landmark report in 2014.
“I think it’s unlikely that they have an H-bomb at the moment, but I don’t expect them to keep testing basic devices indefinitely either”, he said.
Vice Unification Minister Hwang Boo-gi (right, front) shakes hands with Jon Jong-su (left, front), a vice director of the North’s Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, at the start of inter-Korean high-level dialogue in the North Korean city of Gaeseong on Friday.
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Assessing the claims is hard because no one outside an exclusive cadre of Pyongyang leaders knows what advances have been made.
