By Sunny Lee
Korea Times correspondent
BEIJING ― North Korea Saturday once again claimed nuclear fusion success, in an apparent bid to highlight the unlikely scientific achievement amid widespread global skepticism.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official mouthpiece newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party, on Saturday claimed: "Despite the fact that our country is under the pressure of extreme [U.N.] sanctions and pressure, we proudly succeeded in nuclear fusion through our 'unique' methods," Yonhap News Agency said.
The North's newspaper also added that the new achievement is "to develop a new source of energy," in a seeming effort to counter the international suspicion over its nuclear weapons ambition.
The newspaper said the project was a "very difficult and arduous research" that involved maintaining "a high temperature of tens and thousands of Celsius degrees" and took "astronomical financial investment.
Yet North Korea didn't mention the principle behind "the unique" way it claimed used to carry out its experiments, nor did it show any picture of the laboratory where the experiment was allegedly carried out.
North Korea first reported its claim of nuclear fusion on the front of the newspaper on Wednesday. Saturday's report was much longer.
Analysts remain very skeptical, if not entirely dismissing, about North Korea's renewed claim, whose first implication is that its nuclear technology now has reached a level that can create hydrogen bombs.
Fusion is the process used in hydrogen bombs to generate a thermonuclear explosion, which is far more powerful than fission in atomic device.
But experts don't believe North Korea has hydrogen bombs. "Fission is yes, but not fusion," Joseph Bermudez, an internationally recognized military analyst for Jane's Intelligence Review and author of "The Armed Forces of North Korea," told The Korea Times.
If proven true, North Korea will be the first country in the world to carry out nuclear fusion.
Some analysts view that the North's claim is to lay a foothold for its self-promoting image as a nuclear state, by hyping the latest breakthrough in the nuclear technology front.
The local DongA Ilbo newspaper warned that South Korea shouldn't be too dismissive about the North's claim. "We shouldn't forget that North Korea's declarations often later became reality," it said in an editorial.
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