A weekend of provocative North Korean activity has left local experts in Northeast Asian politics and security with a familiar sense of unease.
On Saturday, North Korea’s state-run newspaper ran a photograph showing leader Kim Jong Un in an undisclosed location examining what the agency claimed to be nuclear warhead small enough to be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile. Later that afternoon the government announced it had successfully conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.
South Korea’s weather agency confirmed that an earthquake generated by Saturday’s test was five to six times more powerful than those generated by previous tests, indicating yet another leap in North Korean destructive capability.
“I think the claim (of possessing a hydrogen bomb) is likely exaggerated, but we underestimate Pyongyang at our peril,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Honolulu-based foreign-policy think tank Pacific Forum CSIS. “Clearly, this was a test of increased magnitude — a ‘city buster,’ which means it does not have to be particularly accurate.”
Cossa described the bomb as a “counter-value rather than counter-force weapon,” meaning its primary target would be an enemy’s nonmilitary assets, i.e., cities and the civilian populations they contain.
Coming on the heels of a pair of long-range missile tests in July and the firing of another intermediate-range missile that traveled over the Japanese island of Hokkaido on Aug. 28, Saturday’s test has been received as further evidence that North Korea has accelerated its pursuit of nuclear weaponry capable of striking the United States.
“The North wants to convince the U.S. that they are capable of putting a nuclear warhead on a missile that can reach the U.S. since they believe this is necessary to deter us and thus make themselves more secure,” Cossa said by email. “I believe it will have the opposite effect but they seem convinced otherwise.”
Cossa had previously predicted that North Korea would follow its current round of missile testing with a nuclear test. If his forecast holds true, North Korea will next signal a willingness to return to negotiations.
“The catch is they will agree to freeze testing, since their current testing cycle is now completed, in return for a lifting of sanctions or some sort of humanitarian/economic support,” he said. “What they will not do is freeze their nuclear and missile programs. A testing freeze is easy to verify but keeps their current capabilities in place; a program freeze requires intrusive inspections which they will not allow.
“The question then will be whether or not we will fall for this ruse,” Cossa said.
Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, said North Korea likely has in its sights a “three-pronged endgame” that will enhance Kim’s regime at home and abroad.
“(Kim’s) father began the project but (Kim) can claim that he was the one that achieved the goal of making North Korea a recognized nuclear-weapon state,” Roy said by telephone Sunday. “This is important because the economy has not done well enough for that to be the basis of his government being seen as highly successful.”
Roy said North Korea also maintains a viable nuclear weapons program will serve as a deterrent against the perceived threat of a U.S. or South Korean invasion while at the same time forcing the United States to treat the country as more of an equal, thereby improving its chances of securing economic and political concessions.
Ultimately, Roy said, whether North Korea has yet developed a true hydrogen bomb does not change how the United States would respond to an attack and thus has little impact on the strategic situation from the U.S. point of view.
Roy said the latest round of bomb and missile tests is part of an ongoing cycle in which North Korean provocations prompt the United States to consider — and ultimately dismiss — military response. Each cycle typically ends with the United States putting increased pressure on China to rein in its regional trade partner, and China, often through private channels, signaling that it will do what it can.
“The biggest groan of dismay this weekend probably came from Beijing,” Roy said.
