The announcement by North Korean state media came two days before Kim’s birthday and just over four years after he succeeded his father as leader of the Stalinist state.
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Some analysts say the North hasn’t likely achieved the technology needed to manufacture a miniaturized warhead that could fit on a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
A hydrogen bomb is more powerful than plutonium weapons, which is what North Korea used in its three previous underground nuclear tests.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the US was “monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional partners”, but could not independently verify the country’s claim of a successful test.
USA officials said that they will send up specially equipped “sniffer” planes to determine whether a nuclear test was conducted and if so, what type of test was done.
South Korean President Park Geun Hye slammed the shock nuclear test as a “grave provocation” to national security and called for “strong” global sanctions on Pyongyang.
While a hydrogen bomb is much more powerful than an atomic bomb, it is also much harder to make.
The website of the China Earthquake Network Centre described the seismic activity as a “suspected explosion”, while the Japanese government said there was a strong possibility that “this might be a nuclear test”.
One Western diplomat said that if the latest North Korean nuclear test was confirmed, council members would seek to expand existing United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang. India and Pakistan have also conducted nuclear tests since then and are among eight countries including the United States and China preventing the treaty coming into force.
“North Korea has made claims about its nuclear and missile programs in the past that simply have not held up to investigation”, said Melissa Hanham, a Senior Research Associate at the California-based James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.
It was not immediately clear what action, if any, the 15-nation council was planning to take in response to the North Korean statement that it had conducted a fourth nuclear test.
“As long as the vicious anti-North policy of the USA persists, we will never stop development of our nuclear programme”, it said. North Korea claimed in 2013 that it had scrapped the 1953 armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War.
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Pyongyang also operates a nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, North Korea’s major nuclear facility, about 90 kilometers from the capital.
