Phar Kim Beng

Asian Angle | North Korea nuclear crisis: time to panic yet?

With the United States, China and Russia all at odds, Pyongyang knows the time is ripe to refine its nuclear capabilities

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects what is said to be a miniaturised hydrogen bomb. Photo: AFP

Phar Kim Beng

Published: 2:19pm, 5 Sep 2017Updated: 11:37pm, 22 Sep 2017

North Korea’s hydrogen bomb test has sent shock waves through the world, prompting some Western powers to suggest the country poses a “new order of threat”. But the thermonuclear device it claims to have developed is a case of old wine in a new bottle.

Experts suggest the bomb detonated by Pyongyang had a 100-kiloton yield, making it around seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb America dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. But it is still just one-tenth as powerful as the hydrogen bomb tested by the United States in November 1952, which yielded an explosion on the order of 10,000 kilotons of TNT.

Pyongyang’s bomb is based on the same technology used in that 1952 test. Indeed, all subsequent tests by the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, India and Pakistan have used the same triggering principles developed by Edward Teller, the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb”.

Why the North Korea nuclear crisis will return with a vengeance

It is interesting to note that the North Korea Central News Agency claimed that its “perfect hydrogen bomb test” was “domestically sourced”.

Yet, the fact is that North Korea has merely mimicked the technology developed by other great powers – it may have harnessed the nuclear genie, as it were, but it was not the one that let it out of the bottle.

Pyongyang’s actions come with a twist. Previously, countries who have built nuclear stockpiles have tended to ease off the rhetoric after demonstrating their abilities. But with each test, North Korea ratchets its own aggressive rhetoric up ever higher.

North Koreans watch a televised news broadcast of the test-fire of an intercontinental ballistic rocket. Photo: AP

The US and Russia, even China, have stopped using nuclear tests to showcase their capabilities. All three countries can rely on computer simulations to refine their nuclear prowess.