Rhetoric or real? N. Korea nuclear test may be a bit of both
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s latest nuclear test, its most powerful to date, is a game-changer ... according to North Korea.
As with anything reported by Pyongyang, an authoritarian state run by a third-generation dictator who allows zero dissent or outside investigation, there’s reason to be skeptical.
But even if the North’s assertion that it has rounded a crucial corner in nuclear development is more rhetoric than real, the content of its claim holds some important clues about where the country’s atomic efforts may be heading.
In a meeting in Seoul on Saturday, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said that Friday’s test showed that North Korea’s nuclear capacity has reached a “considerable level” after quickly progressing in the past 10 years.
The newest test by North Korea raises many big questions, including: Rodong and Musudan missiles, and submarine-launched missiles, said Kim Dae Young, a military expert at South Korea’s Korea Defense and Security Forum.
Combine that with everything scientists have learned from the four previous tests and North Korea may now have nuclear weapons capable of attacking its Asian neighbors, said nuclear expert Whang Joo-ho of Kyung Hee University in South Korea.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, provided a similar assessment, saying that North Korea is either at or very close to the point where they can arm shortrange ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead.
“The cumulative knowledge of the five nuclear test explosions and the dozens of ballistic missile tests, especially in the last 12 months, are giving their technical people greater confidence that they can deploy warheads on their ballistic missiles.
If they have not reached that capability today, they certainly will relatively soon with further nuclear test explosions and ballistic missile tests,” he said.
Whatever the state of the program, one thing is clear: The fifth test was the most powerful to date.
Seoul said the magnitude-5.0 seismic event dwarfs the four past quakes associated with North Korean nuclear tests.
Artificial seismic waves measuring 3.9 were reported after North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006, for instance, and a 4.8 was reported from its fourth test this January.
The explosive yield of Friday’s blast would have been 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70 to 80 percent of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, according to South Korea’s weather agency. The North’s fourth test, in January, was an estimated 6 kilotons.
This power strongly indicates a legitimate advance.
“If previous tests were conducted with the purpose of acquiring the nuclear bomb, the newest test shows that the North finally owns a real, weaponized nuclear bomb,” Kim said.
The RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded U.S. think tank, said in a 2010 report that the detonation of a 10-kilton nuclear weapon in the South Korean capital of Seoul could cause more than 200,000 deaths and would easily overwhelm doctors and beds in hospitals throughout the country.
The big question, though, is whether Pyongyang can make warheads small and light enough to be armed on a missile that can reach the mainland United States — much more advanced technology.
Kimball from the Arms Control Association said North Korea has not yet demonstrated the ability to launch a medium- or long-range missile that can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and is still years away from having an intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver a nuclear warhead that can hit the continental U.S.
If the North has mastered miniaturization, the next step would be making and stamping bombs that can be put on warheads.