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Decoding North Korea’s Claim of a Successful Nuclear Test

Screens at the Korea Meteorological Administration, in Seoul, South Korea, showing seismic waves on Friday. The detonation was equivalent to 10 kilotons of TNT, the Defense Ministry said.Credit...Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

The Korean Central News Agency, the official news service of North Korea, on Friday published a statement issued by the nation’s nuclear weapons institute. Following is the complete text of the statement, with key passages highlighted, accompanied by context and analysis by the correspondents of The New York Times:

Scientists and technicians of the D.P.R.K. carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground under the plan of the Workers’ Party of Korea (W.P.K.) for building strategic nuclear force.

The use of the phrase “nuclear warhead” rather than “nuclear device” is noteworthy, suggesting a specific, miniaturized design that can be mounted on a missile. D.P.R.K. refers to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name, and the Workers’ Party of Korea is the ruling party, led by Kim Jong-un.

The Central Committee of the W.P.K. sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists and technicians of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test.

The nuclear test finally examined and confirmed the structure and specific features of movement of nuclear warhead that has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets of the Hwasong artillery units of the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army as well as its performance and power.

The Hwasong artillery units are believed to be involved in the development of intercontinental missiles, but Hwasong also refers to a class of medium-range North Korean missiles, their version of a Scud missile. The Hwasong units have been conducting a series of missile tests in recent months, raising regional fears that the North can already mount a nuclear weapon on a missile capable of striking its neighbors, South Korea and Japan.

The North recently tested a missile that may be able to reach American bases in the Pacific and has been working on one that can reach the continental United States. But experts say it could take five years for the North to develop the technology needed, including a warhead capable of surviving the stress of re-entering the atmosphere.

It was confirmed through the results of analysis of the test that the measured values including explosion might and the nuclear material usage coefficient conformed with the calculated values and that there was no radioactive materials leakage during the test and, therefore, no adverse impact on the ecological environment of the surroundings.

The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the D.P.R.K. to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power with a firm hold on the technology for producing and using various fissile materials. This has definitely put on a higher level the D.P.R.K.’s technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets.

The reference to standardization may be intended to suggest progress in the North’s manufacturing process after five tests as well as the possibility that it is ready to produce warheads for deployment.

That impression is reinforced by the North’s assertion that it can produce warheads “at will and as many as it wants,” which is also a reminder that it has an expanding supply of fuel for nuclear weapons. The North expelled international inspectors and restarted its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in 2013 after the United States suspended talks. It appears to have resumed reprocessing spent fuel from the reactor this year to extract more plutonium, according to the United Nations.

By citing “various fissile materials,” the North may be signaling that it has a second source of nuclear material besides the plutonium from Yongbyon reactor — a program to produce highly enriched uranium that it disclosed to a visiting American nuclear physicist in 2010. North Korea is believed to have material for at least a dozen, and perhaps as many as 20, nuclear weapons, but it is unclear how many it has actually built. Experts say that number depends in large part on how much highly enriched uranium it has produced.

In case you missed it the first time, the statement makes a second reference here to mounting nuclear warheads on missiles.

The nuclear warhead explosion test is a demonstration of the toughest will of the W.P.K. and the Korean people to get themselves always ready to retaliate against the enemies if they make provocation, as it is part of practical countermeasures to the racket of threat and sanctions against the D.P.R.K. kicked up by the U.S.-led hostile forces who have gone desperate in their moves to find fault with the sovereign state’s exercise of the right to self-defense while categorically denying the D.P.R.K.’s strategic position as a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.

The statement reminds the world that sanctions imposed against North Korea over the past decade have neither prevented it from financing and procuring materials needed to make advances in its nuclear program, nor caused enough pain for it to abandon the effort. The North has demanded that the United States recognize it as a nuclear power, but Washington has insisted that it agree to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula before talks resume.

The D.P.R.K. will take further measures to bolster the state nuclear force in quality and quantity for safeguarding its dignity and right to existence and genuine peace from the U.S. increasing threat of a nuclear war.

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