[Courtesy of Xinhua News]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un praised scientists for having miniaturized nuclear warheads successfully to fit on ballistic missiles and create a "true" deterrent, state media said Wednesday.
"The nuclear warheads have been standardized to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturizing them," Kim said at a meeting with nuclear scientists, according to Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency.
"This can be called a true nuclear deterrent," Kim was quoted as saying.
Many experts have expressed doubts about North Korea's claim that it has entered the technological phase to miniaturize and diversify nuclear bombs.
"The United States has not seen North Korea demonstrate a capability to miniaturize a warhead," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters.
Pyongyang's nuclear tests were aimed at developing an implosion-type device that weighs a few hundred kilograms, Jeffrey Lewis at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies said.
North Korea might choose to build nuclear-armed artillery that would be difficult for the United States and South Korea to completely eliminate, he said in a recent article carried by 38 North.
One possibility is that North Korea might attempt to develop an artillery shell similar to early US nuclear artillery projectiles such as the W-9, a gun-type device that used uranium, he said.
Over the past few years, the two Koreas have invested in new artillery and missile systems "in what is clearly an action-reaction cycle", he said, adding South Korea's development of new ballistic and cruise missiles with precision-strike has alarmed North Korea's leadership.
"North Korea may view nuclear-armed artillery as an effective deterrent to South Korean military action, particularly to South Korean threats to decapitate the North Korean leadership," he said.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
