Kim Jong-un�s big announcement
Whatever else one says about North Korea, its leaders do have a talent for showmanship. Kim Jong-uns announcement this morning that his country tested a hydrogen bomb is a literal bombshell, designed to grab the attention of an international community that has grown numb over the years to North Koreas bad behavior.
North Korea announced what it called the H-bomb for justice with its usual bombastic prose. The spectacular success made by the DPRK in the H-bomb test this time is a great deed of history, a historic event of the national significance as it surely guarantees the eternal future of the nation, a statement from the state news agency said.
If the report is correct, this is the fourth time that North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon. Previous underground tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013, inspired similar headlines around the world and cries of indignation from the international community. This time, North Korea upped the provocation, saying it had tested a hydrogen bomb, which is exponentially more powerful than the first generation of conventional nuclear weapons. In 1954, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, that yielded an explosion of nearly fifteen megatons and gouged out a crater half a mile in diameter. It was a thousand times as powerful as the blast that devastated Hiroshima, in 1945.
This is scary stuff, if true. But many nuclear experts are expressing doubts that the explosionwhich was detected by seismic monitors at 10 A.M. in North Koreawas large enough to reflect even a failed hydrogen-bomb test. Initially reported as an earthquake, the blast was assessed as having a magnitude of 5.1 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 4.8 by South Korean intelligence. In either case, that would indicate an explosion just a little larger than North Koreas underground nuclear test in 2013.
If North Korea really did test a hydrogen bomb, its yield should have been about 100 times as large as the yield of this test. Thus the Norths nuclear weapon designs appear to still be very primitive, Bruce Bennett, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation, told NK News on Wednesday morning. (For a cogent explanation of the science behind the hydrogen bomb Bennetts comments are worth reading.)
Another longtime North Korean nuclear expert, Daniel Pinkston, recently told the Washington Post that it was virtually impossible that North Korea had the technology to build a hydrogen weapon. One possible explanation for the size of the explosion is that the North Koreans used what is called a boosted fission weapon, a conventional nuclear weapon that has an increased yield due to the addition of a small amount of fusion fuel.
North Korea has been hinting for some time that it was developing a hydrogen bomb, or thermonuclear weapon, as it is sometimes called. In December, Kim Jong-un personally announced, while touring a revolutionary site frequently visited by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and father, Kim Jong-il, that his country was a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate [a] self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb.
Why a hydrogen bomb? In his Oedipal competition with his illustrious predecessors, Kim Jong-un needs to claim something that is uniquely his own accomplishment.
Kims birthday is Friday (he will be either thirty-two or thirty-three, his exact date of birth being among the many North Korean mysteries), and the nuclear test might be something of a sensational early gift to himself.
Meanwhile, North Koreas ruling Workers Party is preparing for its seventh party congress, in May. Communist countries normally have party congresses every few years, but North Korea hasnt held one since 1980. Kim is likely to use the congress to elaborate on his plans to simultaneously develop North Koreas nuclear program and its economy. The slogan byungjin, which roughly translates to simultaneous, was introduced by Kim in 2013 and is expected to be the hallmark of his regime. Kim has indicated that he does not intend to barter away North Koreas nuclear program for economic aid and recognition. Rather, he wants North Korea to be at least tacitly recognized as a nuclear power, like Pakistan.
With its repeated provocations and escalations, Pyongyang has been methodically wearing down its critics and neighbors to the point where they can no longer react. South Koreans barely blink when North Korea threatens, as it periodically does, to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. New Yorker
