North Korea Threatens Nuclear Strike, But Can Kim Jong-un Follow Through?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un responded Friday to recent U.N. sanctions by issuing nuclear threats and launching several short-range missiles into the sea. The U.N. sanctions came in response to a recent North Korean nuclear test and rocket launch, but Pyongyang’s ability to follow through on Kim Jong-un’s threats of a preemptive nuclear strike remains uncertain.

Earlier this year, North Korea claimed to have tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. Later, the impoverished country initiated a banned long-range missile test that successfully inserted an object into orbit. The satellite was later found to be spinning out of control, but the ballistic missile launch itself was in contravention of standing U.N. sanctions.

In response to North Korea’s recent nuclear and long-range missile testing, the U.N. handed down a series of much stronger sanctions. According to Voice of America, the new resolution had more than 50 co-sponsors and placed a blanket embargo on the sale of both conventional and non-conventional weapons to North Korea. It also further restricted the export of coal and other minerals from the country, and banned the sale of all luxury goods to North Korea.

Kim Jong-un responded to the new U.N. sanctions against North Korea by placing his nuclear arsenal on high alert. According to The Guardian, the dictator indicated that his nuclear weapons would be ready to launch “at any time.”

While it is clear that North Korea has the capability to produce nuclear weapons, whether or not they actually have a nuclear arsenal to put on high alert is less certain.

Tilman Ruff, a nuclear disarmament advocate from Melbourne University, told The Guardian that North Korea likely has “probably less than 10 relatively crude nuclear weapons, in the global scale of 15,530.”

According to ABC News, North Korea possesses enough separated plutonium to produce at least a handful of nuclear warheads, but the country could potentially ramp up production to the point where it could build as many as 100 nuclear weapons.

North Korea has engaged in a number of nuclear tests in the past, including the recent test that drew new sanctions from the U.N., but experts are not convinced that Pyongyang is capable of miniaturizing a nuclear device to the point where it could be placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fired at the United States.

When North Korea claimed last January that a seismic event detected in South Korea was from a miniaturized hydrogen bomb test, an anonymous source in the South Korean military told NBC News, “we presume that it was not a hydrogen bomb test.”

The North Korean long-range rocket test last month was derided by South Korea, the United States, and allies as a veiled ICBM test, but the mobile KN-08 weapon system is seen as more of a threat. As previously reported by Inquisitr, U.S. commander of NORAD, Admiral Bill Gortney, has previously stated that the KN-08 is a very credible nuclear threat.

“Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland,” Gortney said at a press briefing last April. “And that’s the way we think. That’s our assessment of the process.”

Unlike the stationary rocket that North Korea launched last month, the KN-08 is mobile, which theoretically would make it more difficult to track and counter.

The missiles that North Korea fired into the sea in response to the new U.N. resolution were short-range. According to The Guardian, a South Korean official reported that the missiles flew less than 90 miles before falling into the water.

Are you concerned that North Korea could launch nuclear weapons at the United States via its mobile KN-08 rockets?

[AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File]