imperialists provoke us a bit we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre emptive nuclear strike The United States must choose It's up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not Earlier that month the same website had boasted that North Korea had a hydrogen bomb that could wipe out Manhattan If this H bomb were to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes said the article North Korea has made such threats before The country has been promising to wipe out its enemies with nuclear strikes since the late 1990s and early 2000s One of the most regularly repeated threats involves blowing up Seoul the capital city of South Korea In April 2017 a North Korean newspaper stated that the country's army NORTH KOREA NEEDS TO GET THE NUCLEAR WARHEADS DEPLOYED FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE ALWAYS ON STANDBY SO AS TO BE FIRED ANY MOMENT had its nuclear arsenal aimed at US military bases in South Korea on islands in the Pacific KIM JONG UN LEADER OF NORTH KOREA Ocean and on the US mainland
No nuclear strikes have actually occurred And since North Korea has been making threats for decades without acting on them the world tends to shrug off the disturbing videos and articles If you follow North Korean media you constantly see bellicose language directed against the US and South Korea and occasionally Japan is thrown in there and it's hard to know what to take seriously says John Delury of Yonsei University in South Korea However North Korea's threatening behavior goes beyond propaganda The country has also built up a nuclear arsenal and tested weapons technology in violation of international law EXPLOSIVE POWER North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or the DPRK The country was founded on September 9 1948 Approximately the same size as the state of New York North Korea is located on a peninsula extending from Eastern Asia bordering China to the north and South Korea to the south The leader Kim Jong un heads a communist government that tightly controls its population North Korea's 25 million people are subject to
malnutrition poor living conditions and even forced labor Travel is restricted and communications are censored and monitored Corruption permeates the North Korean government In 2016 Transparency International a group that scores countries on corruption ranked North Korea the third most corrupt country in the world Kim Jong un is the latest member of the Kim family to hold power and his reach is extreme His regime controls all media and communications restricts the population's travel and maintains a strong military despite the fact that many people living in North Korea don't have access to basic necessities The Kim dynasty fears that the rest of the world is out to destroy the regime This paranoia has North Korean dictator Kim Jong un took power in 2011 following the death of his father Kim Jong il
prompted the country to pour its resources into military development and continually flaunt its military might In 2005 the Korean Central News Agency released a statement saying that the country had manufactured nukes for self defense The statement claimed that US president George W Bush was attempting to isolate and stifle North Korea and that the country needed nuclear weapons to ensure its survival A year later an underground explosion rattled the earth in northeastern North Korea That first explosion wasn't huge by nuclear weapons standards But it proved that the country had become a nuclear power Nuclear weapons exploit the energy contained within the nucleus of an atom Splitting apart particles in the nucleus a process called fission or joining them together a process called fusion releases a burst of energy When many atoms split or fuse in quick succession the result can be a devastating blast with enough power to destroy a large portion of a city A typical nuclear weapon in the US arsenal delivers hundreds of kilotons of explosive power One kiloton is equal to 1 000 short tons 907 metric tons of the explosive material TNT North Korea's first test blast
