S. Korea: 5.6 earthquake in N. Korea artificial, may have been nuke test
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says a magnitude 5.6 quake in North Korea was artificial, believed to be the North’s sixth nuclear test.
It says it detected a seismic wave from 12:34 p.m. to 12:36 p.m. local time (11:34 p.m. to 11:36 p.m. EDT). South Korea’s weather agency said the unusual seismic activity occurred in Kilju, northern Hamgyong Province. The U.S. Geological Survey called the quake an explosion with a magnitude 6.3.
The quake came just hours after North Korea claimed that its leader has inspected the loading of a hydrogen bomb into a new intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected the new, “super explosive” hydrogen bomb meant to be loaded into an intercontinental ballistic missile, Pyongyang’s state media said, a claim to technological mastery that some outside experts will doubt.
Photos released by North Korea showed Kim talking with his lieutenants as he observed a silver, peanutshaped device that was apparently the purported thermonuclear weapon destined for an ICBM.
Kim was said by his propaganda mavens to have made a visit to the Nuclear Weapons Institute and inspected a “homemade” H-bomb with “super explosive power” that “is adjustable from tens … to hundreds” of kilotons, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korea in July conducted its first ever ICBM tests, part of a stunning jump in progress for the country’s nuclear and missile program since Kim rose to power after his father’s death in late 2011. The North followed its two tests of ICBMs, which, when perfected, could target large parts of the United States, by threatening to launch a salvo of its Hwasong-12 intermediate range missiles toward the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam in August.
It flew a Hwasong-12 over northern Japan last week, the first such overflight by a missile capable of carrying nukes, in a launch Kim described as a “meaningful prelude” to containing Guam, the home of major U.S. military facilities.
The first of its two nuclear tests last year involved what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. Experts and outside governments are skeptical of the hydrogen claim, but it is almost impossible to independently confirm North Korean statements about its highly secret weapons program.