UN Security Council to hold emergency talks on North Korea

The test, which came just two days before leader Kim’s birthday, was initially detected by worldwide seismology monitors as a 5.1-magnitude tremor next to the North’s main Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeast.

Atomic bombs work on the principle of nuclear fission, where energy is released by splitting atoms of enriched uranium or plutonium encased in the warhead. According to the Daily Mail, reports in the state-controlled North Korean media claimed that North Korea had conducted a powerful H-bomb test in a surprise move that has set the world on edge.

“That the bomb can become compact is the characteristic, and so this means North Korea has the U.S.in mind in making this H-bomb announcement”, says Tatsujiro Suzuki, professor at the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition at Nagasaki University.

China, North Korea’s most important diplomatic and economic partner, took a more nuanced stance than others, saying it “firmly opposes” the test and would summon Pyongyang’s ambassador for “solemn representations”.

Experts estimate that Pyongyang now has 10-16 nuclear weapons with potentially as many as 50-100 by 2020. South Korea pledged to seek additional sanctions from the United Nations Security Council “so that the North will pay the price for the nuclear test”, even as its own spy agency expressed doubts about the claim.

The size of Wednesday’s quake is bigger than seismic activity reported in previous tests. In that case, the explosive power of a nuclear weapon is boosted with tritium and deuterium gas-heavy hydrogen isotopes. Pyongyang acknowledges failure. The United States announces it will not carry out the food aid deal.

The country declared it had nuclear weapons in 2003, and conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

“We have perfectly succeeded in testing our first hydrogen bomb”.

South Korean intelligence officials and several analysts also questioned whether Wednesday’s explosion was a test of a full-fledged hydrogen device, pointing to the fact that it was roughly as powerful as North Korea’s last atomic test in 2013. In the ensuing years, the U.S has been joined by the USSR/Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Rubio, a 2016 presidential candidate, said Obama was insufficiently tough on the world stage and that North Korea’s “lunatic” supreme leader, the eccentric Kim Jong-un, was taking advantage of that.

“North Korea’s nuclear test is a serious threat to our nation’s security and we absolutely can not tolerate it”, Abe told reporters.

China is invariably described as the closest thing North Korea has to a friend, and the country that can exert the most pressure or influence.