NORTH KOREA SAYS IT HAS DEVELOPED ADVANCED HYDROGEN BOMB

 

This was a Wall Street Journal news alert tonight (Saturday)  .  Nancy 
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

North Korea Says It Has Developed Advanced Hydrogen Bomb

Nation threatens an electromagnetic pulse attack –  EMP

September 2, 2017
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear-weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on Sunday. PHOTO: KCNA/REUTERS
By Jonathan cheng

SEOUL—North Korea said it has “succeeded in making a more developed” hydrogen bomb and mounting it on the tip of a long-range missile, and threatened a high-altitude nuclear blast that experts fear could wipe out electrical networks in the U.S.

Leader Kim Jong Un witnessed a hydrogen bomb being mounted onto a new intercontinental ballistic missile while visiting the Nuclear Weapons Institute, North Korea’s state media said Sunday. The state media also published what experts said could be the North’s first photos of a purported hydrogen bomb.

Mr. Kim in the report boasted that all of the components of its thermonuclear weapon are homemade, insulating the nuclear-weapons program from sanctions and “enabling the country to produce powerful nuclear weapons, as many as it wants.”

While the claims couldn’t be immediately verified, the report, which didn’t specify the date of Mr. Kim’s visit, is likely to raise expectations of a sixth nuclear test or another long-range missile test by North Korea.

The White House said President Donald Trump spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to “discuss ongoing efforts to maximize pressure on North Korea.” It said the leaders “reaffirmed the importance of close cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea in the face of the growing threat from North Korea.”

Mr. Abe told reporters he and Mr. Trump agreed to work closely together to increase pressure on North Korea. It was their third telephone discussion since Pyongyang launched a missile over Japanon Aug. 29.

The North Korean report comes after a string of tests this year that have flaunted the country’s missile capabilities and menaced its neighbors. The North claims it can reach much of the continental U.S. with a long-range missile, though experts say the missile’s distance would be constrained by the size of any warhead that was mounted on it.

Skepticism remains as to whether the North can make a warhead small enough to fit on the tip of a missile, as well as whether any North Korean missile warhead would be robust enough to survive re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere.

Sunday’s report also follows a pair of nuclear tests last year, including one a year ago this week, that North Korea claimed were hydrogen bombs.

Experts in the U.S., however, have cast suspicion on whether those explosions were large enough to have been hydrogen bombs, though few question Pyongyang’s determination to master the technology and develop such weapons.

In photos published by North Korean state media alongside its Sunday report, Mr. Kim was seen gesturing at a bulbous silver device that appeared capable of containing the two nuclear devices that would be necessary for a thermonuclear blast, as well as a possible outer shell for the device.

“There are a lot of things that are plausible about it…but we don’t have X-ray vision, so we can’t see into that,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., who said she believed the North was showing off the device in advance of a possible test.

A hydrogen bomb—technically known as a “thermonuclear weapon”—usually uses a smaller, primary atomic explosion to ignite a secondary, much larger blast. The first stage is based on nuclear fission—the splitting of atoms—and the second on nuclear fusion, which combines atoms, smashing them together and unleashing more energy. Additional stages can be added to increase its destructive force.

That makes the H-bomb more powerful than early nuclear weapons that typically used a single-stage blast based only on nuclear fission. Those weapons are known as “pure fission” devices and are thought to have been used in all of North Korea’s three previous nuclear tests, which it said involved atomic bombs.

According to the North’s report on Sunday, Mr. Kim watched a newly upgraded hydrogen bomb being loaded onto a new long-range missile. The bomb has explosive power that can range up to hundreds of kilotons, the North Korean report said.

Mr. Kim also specifically cited the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack. Fears of an EMP strike by North Korea have circulated for years among some U.S. policy makers, though others have openly dismissed the possibility of Pyongyang launching such a strike.

In an EMP attack, North Korea would conduct a high-altitude nuclear detonation over the continental U.S. The detonation could emit a brief but powerful electromagnetic signal capable of disrupting swaths of the U.S. electrical grid, experts say.

Ms. Hanham said while such an attack was theoretically possible, the North’s goals made it more likely that Pyongyang would try to follow through on its threat to send a nuclear-tipped missile into a large American city.

Ultimately, she says, Sunday’s statement from Pyongyang “is a piece of propaganda meant to send a message to the U.S. that they are a nuclear power that should be taken seriously and that we shouldn’t mess with them.”

“They are trying to terrorize us,” Ms. Hanham said.

 

 

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