DPRK threatens to use Hydrogen bomb

“He turned North Korea into a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb”, Kim Jong un said.

South Korea, meanwhile, wants the North to agree to regular reunions for families separated by the Korean War.

No further details on the North Korean H-bomb were provided.

The comments were carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

In September, North Korea stated that the country is prepared to engage in nuclear confrontations with the United States at “any time”, should they be provoked.

But many experts on military and worldwide affairs have always been skeptical of North Korea’s military capabilities and their frequent pronouncements of might. And just a day before the hydrogen bomb announcement, the Guardian reported that North Korea was close to finishing an upgrade on a rocket launch site in Sohae.

The U.N. report also recommended a referral to the ICC, an idea that 112 countries supported last month in a vote in the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee. The first H-bomb test was the Ivy Mike shot, which had a yield of 10.2 megatons.

In September, however, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) had raised a red flag over what appeared to be a new “hot cell” facility under construction at the North Korea’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex.

“We believe it is critical for the council to continue to shine a light on the abuses in North Korea and speak regularly about the DPRK’s human rights situation – and what we can do to change it – for as long as the crimes committed there persist”, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said in a statement.

Pyongyang’s carrying out of tests to set off nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013 merited sanctions from the United Nations, banning trade and financing activities that would help its weapons programme.

“Solving this problem would likely require more underground nuclear tests”, it added.

“We have always opposed the involvement of the U.N. Security Council in a country’s human rights issues”, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a regular press conference in Beijing.

Despite calls for the North’s referral to the ICC, however, it is unlikely that the Security Council will actually be able to refer the matter to the ICC because China and Russian Federation, which have friendlier ties with North Korea than any other countries, are expected to veto such a move.

We are now facing a time of uncontrolled military proliferation – is a major world war and environmental disaster inevitable?