By Chyung Eun-ju, Park Si-soo
North Korea’s repeated provocations have helped to familiarize many people here with the names of high-tech weapons that might seem like secret codes to laypeople.
Among the weapons are ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile), SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile), and THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense).
The reclusive state’s latest nuclear test has added another one: EMP ― a short name for electro-magnetic pulse.
EMP is an intensive wave of electrical energy generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated.
The powerful magnetic pulse paralyzes almost all electronic devices and computer systems within a radius of hundreds of kilometers of the blast site for up to several months. If the detonation is in the air, the area could be much wider.
EMP has garnered international attention after it featured in an article written by a North Korean scientist and published by the state-run Rodong Shinmun newspaper on Monday, one day after the nuclear test, the seventh and the most powerful.
The article elaborated on the destructive force of a hydrogen bomb, which the North claimed to have tested on Sunday.
In the article titled “Power of nuclear weapon’s EMP,” Prof. Kim Sung-won of Pyongyang’s elite tech school, Kim Chaek University of Technology, wrote that the North had confirmed the “massive destruction force of EMP” through a mid-air explosion of a hydrogen bomb.
One day before the test, North Korea’s state-run broadcaster KCNA described the hydrogen bomb as “multi-functional” with “great destructive power that can be detonated even at high altitudes for a super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack.”
It is still uncertain whether the North conducted the latest test with a hydrogen bomb that could unleash EMP attack, because doing so requires more complicated technology.
Regardless, experts are worried that North Korea is developing a weapon for an EMP attack, especially on the United States.
Former CIA director James Woolsey said an EMP attack could bring the U.S. to “a cold, dark halt.”