North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said his country will conduct an upcoming nuclear warhead test and multiple ballistic missile launches capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
The country was slapped with tough UN sanctions after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket last month.
The KCNA news agency said. “Declaring that a nuclear warhead explosion test and a test-fire of several kinds of ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads will be conducted in a short time to further enhance the reliance of nuclear attack capability, he (Kim) instructed the relevant section to make prearrangement for them to the last detail.”
According to KCNA Kim reportedly made the comments while he supervised a test of atmospheric re-entry of a ballistic missile that measured the “thermodynamic structural stability of newly developed heat-resisting materials.”
Kim was quoted by KCNA saying that the test had provided a “sure guarantee for the reliability of the intercontinental ballistic missile warhead re-entry.”
U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said after the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on a resolution that radically expanded existing sanctions that.”Virtually all of the DPRK’s [North Korea] resources are channeled into its reckless and relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”
The North, has conducted four nuclear tests, and also the hydrogen bomb in January which they claim that it was successful. But most experts said the blast was too small to back up the assertion.
The North also says the satellites it has launched into orbit are functioning successfully, although that has never been independently verified.