During a Thursday appearance, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) Kim Jong-un announced the country had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb.
According to the Associated Press, Kim delivered his remarks while touring the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site.
Under the rule of Kim Il-Sung — un’s grandfather and “eternal” North Korean president — the DPRK became a “powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty,” yet experts still doubt the true efficacy of North Korea’s nuclear program.
“I think it’s unlikely that they have an H-bomb at the moment, but I don’t expect them to keep testing basic devices indefinitely, either,” said Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Jeffrey Lewis.
North Korea purportedly conducted underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Furthermore, DPRK claimed it “had successfully developed [nuclear] fission technology” in 2010.