The Weekly Standard October 19, 2006
The Next Test
By Michael Goldfarb
LAST WEEK, John Pike, founder and director of globalsecurity.org, offered his opinion that the nuclear test conducted by North Korea may have been neither a "first test," nor a test of a conventional fission bomb. Rather, Pike said that the North Koreans may have been testing a "trigger device" for a much larger hydrogen bomb (click here to read the original story).
Now CNN is reporting that North Korea plans to conduct as many as three additional tests. South Korean media outlets, on the other hand, seem less concerned with the number of tests than the type. This story from the Korea Times ran under the headline "North Korea Will Test H-Bomb," and lends further credence to Pike's theory:
A Korean-Japanese scholar [Kim Myong-chol] who is considered North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's unofficial spokesman said yesterday that Pyongyang has a hydrogen bomb it would test as part of a series of actions mentioned in its statement against the United States. . . . Asked to provide evidence that the North has developed its own thermonuclear weapons, Kim replied, "That's why we are going to test the bomb. A test will prove that we've got everything necessary just as we had with our nuclear weapons."
As the Seoul Times, points out, North Korea's "daily threats of war against the US, S. Korea and Japan have been a long held tradition but nowadays their bluffs have ceased being empty words." Kim Myong-chol echoed this sentiment in his interview, warning listeners that "We never speak empty words."
Indeed, the North Korean warned of impending missile tests in June of this year, and though few believed the rogue regime would follow through, they did, launching a number of missiles in a highly publicized test on July 5th. Those tests were considered a partial failure, too, though they were no less provocative for it. Then came warning of an impending nuclear test. That test, conducted last Monday, has now been confirmed by American intelligence officials.
Other proliferation experts, such as Joseph Cirincione, of the Center for American Progress, have characterized such statements as "pure speculation," based on the fact that there's "no evidence that North Korea has the technology" to build a thermonuclear weapon. Likewise, Clay Moltz, a professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, called Pike's theory "pretty far out there." Still, the lack of evidence cuts both ways, since clear analysis of North Korea's nuclear program has long been hampered by a dearth of evidence.
For instance, most experts had expected the North Koreans to rely on enriched uranium as the fissile material, based on the large reserves of uranium ore in that country as well as the fact that the design for a uranium device is simple in comparison to that of a plutonium weapon--Moltz compared the construction of a uranium device to "high school physics," while a plutonium design was more like "graduate level work." If the DPRK was not testing a trigger device, Moltz explained that the most likely explanation for the small blast was a "slightly uneven, non-symetric plutonium explosion." North Korea has only a very limited supply of plutonium, leading Moltz to estimate that the regime has enough material to construct at most seven more bombs.
It would be foolish not to take the North Koreans at their word, despite the bizarre claims and rhetorical flourishes that characterize official news from that regime. Australian Prime Minister John Howard made just this point when asked about the North Korean threat of testing a hydrogen bomb. Howard said that "North Korea should be treated seriously in relation to anything it says, because it is an outlaw country that doesn't behave in a normal rational fashion." It should also be noted that in August North Korea declared that the U.N.-brokered armistice that brought an end to major combat operations on the peninsula more than 50 years ago was now "null and void".
Michael Goldfarb is deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
© Copyright 2006, The Weekly Standard
