N Korea’s hydrogen bomb test raises security concerns for India
North Korea’s claim of testing a hydrogen bomb have raised concerns among Indian security experts of a possible reverse flow of the advanced technology to a country that Pyongyang has for long secretly cooperated with on nuclear and missile know-how – Pakistan.
The US Geological Survey registered a 6.3-magnitude quake at North Korea’s Punggye-ri test site on Sunday, and Western experts believe this indicated Kim Jong-un’s regime had detonated a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 100 kilotons. By contrast, the bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945 had a yield of about 15 kilotons.
Hydrogen or thermonuclear bombs use fusion, or the merging of atoms, to unleash huge amounts of destructive energy, unlike atomic bombs that use fission. More significantly, this is a technology Pakistan is not believed to have mastered as yet.
Collaboration between Pakistan and North Korea on nuclear technology dates back to the 1980s. In his 2008 book Goodbye Shahzadi, journalist Shyam Bhatia quoted late Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto as saying that she had smuggled in uranium enrichment know-how during a state visit to North Korea in 1993.
This data was reportedly used to facilitate a missile deal, whereby North Korea supplied Pakistan with long-range missile technology in violation of nonproliferation regimes. It is widely believed Pakistan’s Ghauri missiles are based on North Korea’s Nodong missiles.
“Based on the earlier patterns of cooperation, there is an immediate need to study whether there could be a reverse flow of the technology from North Korea to Pakistan,” said Commodore (retired) C Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies, a Delhi-based think tank.
Air vice marshal (retired) Kapil Kak, a former deputy director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, said there was a long history of clandestine cooperation between Islamabad and Pyongyang. “If North Korea’s nuclear technology has advanced to this extent and if it is shared with Pakistan, it will be a major crisis,” he said.
Kak said the policy of escalation adopted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also represented a major concern for India. “He is escalating to the hilt and no one will take chances with him,” he added.
Experts believe these developments will have a say on how India fashions its security policies vis-à-vis China, which continues to be the biggest backer of the North Korean regime.
Experts said India will also have to focus on China’s larger strategic objectives behind enabling the WMD programmes of countries such as North Korea and Pakistan. “We have to keep a close eye on what the Chinese hope to achieve,” Bhaskar said.