Often I have the luxury of looking around for interesting stories about nuclear issues and choosing what I want to write about on a given day. Other times, there are events that happen that require me to write about them. Today is one of those days. As I was watching the news over dinner last night, there was a breaking story about seismographs registering a 5.1 earthquake in North Korea. The first story I heard pointed out that the epicenter of the quake was near one of their nuclear test facilities at Punggye-ri. This led to speculation that the North Koreans had detonated some sort of nuclear device.
North Korea is known to have at least a few atomic bombs. It is a belligerent secretive dictatorship that has been threatening South Korea and other countries with nuclear destruction for years. They have conducted three tests of atomic bombs. The last such test was in February of 2013. N.K. has tested intermediate range missiles which could carry nuclear bombs to Japan and South Korea if they are able to miniaturize them. Such miniaturization is not simple and it is not known if N.K. has that capability. They have also recently fired cruise missiles from submarines. They claim that these cruise missiles could carry nuclear warheads but, once again, this depends on miniaturization.
Hours after the first reporting of the "earthquake" in N.K., the N.K. government announced that they had just tested a hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen bombs are much more powerful that atomic bombs made with uranium or plutonium. While it is known that N.K. has atomic bombs, their ability to construct and successfully test a hydrogen bomb is unknown. While the seismic readings are consistent with the detonation of an atomic bomb, there are skeptics who don't think that the detonation was indicative of a successful test of a hydrogen bomb. The blast was estimated at about equivalent to six tons of TNT which is less than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A hydrogen bomb explosion should have been much more powerful than an atomic bomb blast so it is doubted that the N.K. test was actually a hydrogen bomb. If they do develop a hydrogen bomb, such bombs can be miniaturized more easily that atomic bombs. This means that they would be able to develop missiles with nuclear warheads.
The current dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un took over when his father died in late 2011. It is believed that Kim's belligerence is partly a concession to military hard liners in N.K. which have pushed for confrontation with South Korea. He has repeatedly threatened nuclear war with South Korea and constantly complained about U.S. troops and U.S. participation in military exercises in South Korea. It is interesting to note that this bomb test occured just two days before Kim's birthday. N.K. may be a military threat but the country is very poor and the people are suffering terribly under Kim's dictatorship. His constant railing about foreign enemies is obviously part of his attempt to hold onto power.
Punggye-ri test site in North Korea:
