N. Korea’s Kim orders further nuclear tests

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered further nuclear tests, state media said Friday, March 11. as military tensions surge on the Korean peninsula with South Korean and U.S. forces engaged in large-scale joint exercises condemned by Pyongyang, AFP reports.

Since the joint drills began Monday, the North has issued daily warnings and statements, talking up its nuclear strike capabilities and threatening to turn Seoul and Washington into "flames and ashes."

Just days after he was photographed posing in front of what state media described as a miniaturised nuclear warhead, Kim said the weapon required further testing.

Overseeing a ballistic missile launch on Thursday, Kim ordered "more nuclear explosion tests to estimate the destructive power of the newly produced nuclear warheads," the North's official KCNA news agency said.

Experts are divided as to just how far the North may have gone in shrinking warheads to a size capable of fitting on a ballistic missile -- a major step forward in strike capability that would present a heightened threat to South Korea, other countries in the region and, eventually, the US mainland.

According to KCNA, Thursday's launch of two short-range ballistic missiles, which traversed the eastern part of the country before falling into the East Sea (Sea of Japan), was part of a nuclear strike exercise.

The aim was to simulate conditions for "exploding nuclear warheads from the preset altitude above targets in the ports under enemy control," the agency said.

Watching the exercise, Kim reiterated an earlier threat to launch an immediate nuclear attack if the "sabre-rattling" South Korea-U.S. drills should harm "even a single tree or a blade of grass" on North Korean territory.

"I will issue a prompt order to launch attack with all military strike means," he said.