HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
conducted its fourth nuclear detonation on 6 January 2016 at 10:00:01 UTC+08:30. At the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site, approximately northwest of Kilju City in Kilju County, an underground nuclear test was carried out. The
United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...
reported a 5.1 magnitude earthquake from the location; the China Earthquake Networks Center reported the magnitude as 4.9. North Korean media announced that the country had successfully tested a
hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lo ...
in "self-defence against US". However, third-party experts as well as officials and agencies in South Korea questioned North Korea's claims and contend that the device was more likely to have been a fission bomb such as a boosted fission weapon. Such weapons use hydrogen fusion to produce smaller, lighter warheads suitable for arming a delivery device such as a missile, rather than to attain the destructive power of a true hydrogen bomb.


Background

North Korea had previously conducted three underground nuclear tests in 2006,
2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...
, and
2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...
, drawing sanctions from the
United Nations Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
. The presidents of the United States and South Korea urged North Korea to rejoin the six-party talks in October 2015. The presidents also warned North Korea against a fourth nuclear test. In December 2015 North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un suggested that the country had the capacity to launch a
hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lo ...
, a device of considerably more power than conventional atomic bombs used in previous tests. The remark was met with skepticism from the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
and South Korean officials. Around this time, the country approached the United States about possible peace talks to end the
Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
. In a
New Year's Day In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day is the first day of the calendar year, January 1, 1 January. Most solar calendars, such as the Gregorian and Julian calendars, begin the year regularly at or near the December solstice, northern winter ...
speech, Kim Jong Un warned that provocation from "invasive outsiders" would be met with a "holy war of justice".


North Korean claims

The North Korean government described the test as a "complete success" and characterized it as self-defense against the United States. North Korean media claimed that the bomb was made the month before the test was carried out. Official state media from the DPRK announced the test. The Korean Central Television (KCTV) said that "the U.S. has gathered forces hostile to heDPRK and raised a slanderous human rights issue to hinder heDPRK's improvement. It is hereforejust to have nH-bomb as self-defense against the U.S. having numerous and humongous nuclear weapons. The DPRK's fate must not be protected by any forces but heDPRK itself". Ri Chun-hee, the television news anchor who announced the deaths of
Kim Il Sung Kim Il Sung (born Kim Song Ju; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he led as its first Supreme Leader (North Korean title), supreme leader from North Korea#Founding, its establishm ...
and Kim Jong Il, emerged from retirement to announce the H-bomb test to both the domestic and international audience.


Skepticism of the hydrogen bomb claim

The earthquake caused by the 2016 nuclear test was 5.1 magnitude, similar to the 5.1-magnitude earthquake that accompanied North Korea's previous 2013 nuclear test (which was estimated by South Korea to have a yield of 6–9 kilotons of TNT and Russian estimates of more than 7 kilotons of TNT). Won-Young Kim at the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory explained it "was more powerful than North Korea's previous nuclear test" and added that it is difficult to quantify "the exact size of North Korea's nuclear detonations because the depth of the explosive device, properties of the rock surrounding the explosion and other factors influence the seismic measurements produced" because North Korea does not publicize the depth of its tests, although the material at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site is thought to be hard
granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
. The tremors were felt in Changbai, Hunchun and Yanji in
Jilin ) , image_skyline = Changbaishan Tianchi from western rim.jpg , image_alt = , image_caption = View of Heaven Lake , image_map = Jilin in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_al ...
province in China.
China Central Television China Central Television (CCTV) is the State media, national television broadcaster of China, established in 1958. CCTV is operated by the National Radio and Television Administration which reports directly to the Publicity Department of th ...
released photos of students being evacuated in the area and stated that the ground at a local high school showed cracks. According to China's Foreign Ministry, Beijing had no advance knowledge of the test. Although North Korea declared that the 2016 test was a "successful" demonstration of a hydrogen bomb, international experts and members of the South Korean government expressed skepticism because the explosion was too small; rather, the test may have involved only a boosted fission weapon. Andre Gsponer of the Independent Scientific Research Institute at the
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
said this technology has "a number of significant technical and military advantages, which explain why it is used in essentially all militarized nuclear weapons, including in India, Pakistan, and North Korea". Quick estimates of the impact of such a weapon "detonated 1,000 meters over downtown Seoul would produce 78,000 fatalities and somewhere around 270,000 estimated injuries", according to Ryan Faith of ViceNews. Analyst Zack Beauchamp of Vox points out that yield and technology in this test "won't fundamentally change the status quo in the Korean peninsula and it would be more a change in degree than in kind in military terms". Bruce W. Bennett, a senior defense analyst of the RAND Corporation research organization, is also skeptical, telling
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
that "the bang they should have gotten would have been 10 times greater… So Kim Jong-un is either lying, saying they did a hydrogen test when they didn't, they just used a little bit more efficient fission weapon – or the hydrogen part of the test really didn't work very well, or the fission part didn't work very well." After considering the seismic data which suggests a 6–9 kiloton yield, other U.S. analysts also do not believe that a hydrogen bomb was detonated. "What we're speculating is they tried to do a boosted nuclear device, which is an atomic bomb that has a little bit of hydrogen, an isotope in it called tritium," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the global security firm Ploughshares Fund. On the other hand, John Carlson, a member of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and former head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office declared previous North Korean tests were purely a primary stage, that is, a nuclear explosion, "and fairly low yield at that". However, in the case of this test, he added that "if it's true, it means they have made something (of a) smaller scale, capable of being put on to a missile" and that North Korea would be aiming to develop a weapon "small enough and light enough to put on to a missile, and the usual parameters are something less than one meter in diameter, and less than a tonne in weight". Admiral Bill Gortney, head of US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in October 2015 he believed North Korea had rockets with enough range to hit the continental US and added that "the secretive state had already developed 'miniaturised' nuclear bombs that could be fitted to these rockets". David Albright, former United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear inspector, on the contrary, thinks Pyongyang can miniaturize a warhead for shorter-range missiles, but not yet for intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. There is a clear distinction between first- and second-generation nuclear weapons, i.e. atomic and
hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...
bombs. However, virtually all second generation bombs use a few grams of deuterium-tritium gas to ensure the reliability and safety of the nuclear fission-explosives. They can then be used on their own as boosted fission bombs or as primaries of two-stage thermonuclear (hydrogen) weapons. Weapons which in contemporary arsenals do not use tritium boosting have a generally lower kiloton yield and are mostly weapons used for specific purposes such as
atomic demolition munition Atomic demolition munitions (ADMs), colloquially known as nuclear land mines, are small nuclear explosive devices. ADMs were developed for both military and civilian purposes. As weapons, they were designed to be exploded in the forward battle a ...
s. Tritium boosting is relatively easy to implement and has advantages in yield, weight, size, safety (zero or negligible yield when the tritium is not in the weapon), resistance to spontaneous fission caused by other warheads and high transparency to X-rays. Jeffrey Lewis, expert at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that a boosted fission weapon is "the most likely scenario in my view, with a failed thermonuclear test a close second".


International reactions

The test was condemned by several governments who called on the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
to strengthen its sanctions against North Korea. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270 was subsequently passed to that effect.


See also

* List of nuclear weapons tests of North Korea * List of states with nuclear weapons *
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperatio ...


References


External links


Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: Military effectiveness and collateral effects
* Arun Vishwanathan, S. Chandrashekar, L.V. Krishnan and Lalitha Sundaresan
''North Korea's 2016 Nuclear Test: An Analysis''.
ISSSP Report No. 1-2016.
Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
: International Strategic and Security Studies Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies, January 10, 2016. {{DEFAULTSORT:North Korean nuclear test, 2016-01 Nuclear test 1 January 2016 in Asia 2016-01 Underground nuclear weapons testing