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| Inside the nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Benjamin David Baker
The latest comments by the country’s leader need to be taken with more than a pinch of salt.
Here we go again. Last Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced that the isolated Hermit Kingdom has developed powerful, fusion-based atomic weapons known as hydrogen bombs. The announcement came as a top United Nations human rights official told a Security Council meeting that it was “essential” that Pyongyang be referred to the International Criminal Court for its many human rights abuses.
There is little doubt that North Korea does have nukes. As The Diplomat has previously reported, Pyongyang probably has between 10 and 20 warheads, with a dozen being a good bet. However, due to Pyongyang’s technical capabilities, the most powerful of these might be in the 10 kiloton range (according to seismic tests of North Korea’s three nuclear tests, the first one in 2006 had a yield of one kiloton, the second one in 2009 clocked four kilotons, and the final test in 2013 measured seven kilotons.)
As nuclear weapons go, these are fairly non-powerful. (By comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons. The largest-ever nuclear device ever exploded, the Soviet Tsar Bomba, had a yield of 50 megatons.) This would still leave a horrific casualty count, not least due to the radioactive fallout. But if the North Korean boasts about a hydrogen bomb are true, then many more could die.
Read the full story at The Diplomat