ASIA SHAKES AS KIM LOBS H-BOMB THREAT
A seismic tremor in North Korea on Sunday appeared to indicate that the country had conducted a sixth nuclear test.
The US Geological Survey said it detected a 5.6 magnitude earthquake near the rogue state’s known nuclear test site, the Washington Post reported.
South Korean authorities deemed the tremor “artificial,” meaning consistent with a nuke test, the paper added.
Earlier Sunday, Pyongyang claimed it has developed a hydrogen bomb that can be mounted on the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile — and threatened a highaltitude nuclear explosion that experts fear could wipe out US electrical networks.
Dictator Kim Jong-un personally inspected the loading of the Hbomb onto the ICBM during a visit to the North’s Nuclear Weapons Institute, Pyongyang’s state media said Sunday.
Kim’s claim could not be indepen- dently confirmed Saturday and will be met with doubt by some experts, the Associated Press reported.
Other experts told The Wall Street Journal that such a blast would create an electromagnetic pulse that would cripple US electrical networks.
“The explosive power of the bomb is adjustable from tens kiloton to hundreds kiloton,” the state run Korean Central News Agency said Sunday.
The new weapon is “a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power that can be detonated even at high altitudes for superpowerful EMP [electromagnetic pulse attack] according to strategic goals,” state media said.
North Korea also boasted that all of the components of the new weapon were “homemade,” thus “enabling the country to produce powerful nuclear weapons, as many as it wants,” without worrying about import sanctions.
Last month, Kim threatened to launch missiles toward the US Pacific territory of Guam.
President Trump escalated tensions by responding in tweets that he would unleash “fire and fury” and that “Military solutions are locked and loaded should North Korea act unwisely.”
In other Korean Peninsula news, Trump told advisers to prepare to withdraw the US from a free-trade agreement with Seoul.
The move could stoke economic tensions with South Korea, an important US ally in the crisis over the North’s nuclear program, the Washington Post noted late Saturday.