North Korea’s announcement that it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb was met with shock and surprise around the world—but there have been months of indications that something in just this vein was on the way.
Kim Jong-un’s visit to Phyongchon Revolutionary Site near Pyongyang in December 2015 would have passed with little comment were it not for the young leader’s passing mention that his state was ready to detonate a hydrogen bomb. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, what it calls its “treasured swords,” has only briefly and tenuously been demonstrated, and when Kim made this unexpected announcement, the outside world was skeptical that Pyongyang had really mastered this complicated and demanding technology.
But as it has so often before, Pyongyang has now surprised and perturbed the outside world by declaring the successful completion of a hydrogen bomb test at its Punggye-ri site.
The world is still grappling with the geopolitical and diplomatic fallout from the test, and the technical plausibility of the claim is already being called into question. But whatever the truth behind this rather shocking announcement, it fits very neatly into North Korea’s developmental and political agenda.
