North Korea said Monday that it has the ability to control the destructive power of a hydrogen bomb, rebutting outside experts’ claim that the North failed to test an H-bomb last month.
The North conducted what it claimed to be a successful test of a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, but experts in Seoul and Washington cast skepticism on Pyongyang’s claim, saying that it must have been a test of a conventional atomic bomb or a boosted fission bomb at best.
South Korea estimated that the yield of the North’s recent nuke test may have reached 6 kilotons, while H-bombs typically yield dozens, if not hundreds, of kilotons.
North Korea refuted such claims, saying that it can adjust the explosive yield of a hydrogen bomb to whatever amount it chooses.
“If our territory is as large as that of the United States and others, we can detonate a hydrogen bomb which is tens or hundreds of times more powerful than that of their H-bombs,” according to dprktoday.com, one of the North’s propaganda sites for outside online users.
It called on Washington to abandon its hostile policy toward North Korea, saying that the U.S. should learn how to coexist with a nuclear-armed North Korea that also has a hydrogen bomb. (Yonhap)
