North Korea Tested ICBM-Ready Hydrogen Bomb; A Closer Look at North Korea's Ruling Family
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news this morning. North Korea is claiming it has successfully tested a powerful hydrogen bomb. Good morning to you. I'm Victor Blackwell.</s>CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christi Paul. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. They also say this latest nuclear test proves that it can now lay this warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile putting America within reach. Again that is coming from North Korea.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes. This is a major development and a clear message for the world and President Trump that they are not backing down. Here's what we know. Overnight the USGS measured a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Not far from North Korea's nuclear test site. A Japanese official say their data shows today's test is at least 10 times more powerful than the test a year ago.</s>PAUL: A few hours ago a defiant message on state-run TV in North Korea declaring the test, quote, "a perfect success." The blast comes less than a day after Pyongyang said it had an ICBM-ready hydrogen bomb. These images, take a look, purport to show North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, you see him there, inspecting the device. Well, this morning global leaders are condemning this test and calling for new measures against the regime.</s>SHINZO ABE, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER (through translator): If North Korea has gone ahead with a nuclear test, this is absolutely not acceptable and we will have to strongly protest. We are starting a national Security Council now to collect information and analyze this.</s>PAUL: We have correspondents and experts standing by around the world for what this provocative new test means and what comes next.</s>BLACKWELL: Let's start with CNN's Will Ripley. He joins us now from Tokyo. He was just in Pyongyang. Will, first to you. The significance of what we're seeing, after the fire and fury comments from the president. And just the timeline of the last couple of weeks.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is all unfolding after a series of events that infuriate North Korea. There were the joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea that ended last week. Then the United States flew B-2 bombers alongside South Korean fighter jets over the Korean peninsula in response to North Korea launching their Hwasong intermediate range missile over Hokkaido here in Japan. After that show of force by the United States we saw messaging from North Korea indicating a willingness to open the door for diplomacy, urging the United States to rethink its position of not recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power and warning that North Korea will only continue to advances its weapons program faster if the United States puts additional pressure on Pyongyang and its leader Kim Jong-un, pressures meaning sanctions, increased diplomatic isolation and continued shows of military force. When I landed here in Tokyo last night, I thought the situation may be calming down. And we might go back into a holding pattern for a while, but I was concerned when North Korea released those images shortly before this nuclear test showing their leader standing in front of what they claimed was a miniaturized hydrogen bomb, a warhead that could be placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile. And then of course just a few hours after that a large earthquake, 6.3 magnitude, detected in the northern region of North Korean by the border with China, the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, the site of all of North Korea's previous underground nuclear tests and then just eight minutes later a second earthquake detected smaller, believed to be 4.3 in magnitude. Some analysts think it could be the result of a tunnel collapse which gives you a sense of just how powerful this first explosion was if it would cause the rocks underground to actually collapse, creating a secondary manmade seismic event, an event that was traced by seismologists all over the world, even in Norway where they are estimating that the yield of this explosion was around 120 kilotons of TNT. You compare that to the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, believed to be around 15 kilotons. So a dramatically larger explosion that anything we've seen from North Korea clearly sending a defiant message to President Trump and the United States that despite the warnings, despite the fiery rhetoric, the fire and fury remarks, the locked and loaded remarks, referring to the United States' nuclear arsenal, that North Korea and Kim Jong-un believe that these weapons of mass destruction are the leverage that are going to get them to the international diplomatic table from a position of respect. Because what was reiterated to me time and time again when I was on the ground in Pyongyang just last week, North Korea is not developing these weapons because they want to use them against the United States. They consider this a nuclear deterrent in hopes that in the long term the United States will end what they consider a hostile policy against their country, recognize them as a nuclear weapons state. North Korea has had it written in their constitution since 2013 that they are going to be a nuclear power and what this test has proven is that they are not straying from that goal.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. Will Ripley for us in Tokyo. Will, thank you very much.</s>PAUL: Joining us now, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And Christiane, I want to ask a question off of what Will just said. Is the endgame as we know it for Kim Jong-un to exert his power and to use a nuclear weapon or is it just to be recognized as a country that has the power to do so?</s>CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you heard Will's description of the North Korean side. And they say one thing. Now the importance, though, is to hear what the U.S. say and others who have really engaged with North Korea and many are now saying very similar things, that North Korea will not denuclearize. The outgoing head of international intelligence -- director of National Intelligence in the United States said it is probably now a lost cause trying to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. That was months ago after the test before that. We've heard from former secretary of Defense, William Perry. I've been speaking to these people for months as this crisis escalates, who says that North Korea wants three things. A, the survival of the Kim dynasty and the country, B, to be taken seriously as an international nuclear power and partner, and, C, to develop its economy. I've talked to a former CIA analyst who is the last and the latest people to actually meet with senior North Korean officials outside North Korea to hear really what they have in mind and they have reaffirmed that just in the last month or so as well. That the North Koreans tell them, tell these American officials, that they will not denuclearize, that they will not give up their nuclear would be crazy to do so now that they're finally in the last throws of perfecting it. They want to change the relationship and change the balance of power between North Korea and the rest of the world. They want to be taken seriously. But they also want, they say, to sign a peace deal with the U.S. Now the problem with that is that analysts believe that that will be the only thing they want. They want all U.S. forces out of the Korean peninsula and out of that area. So it is a very tricky situation and those who really have a real handle on this, especially on the American side, are concerned that while the North Korean regime is not suicidal, they believe, that there could be some blunder, some misstep, some miscommunication when North Korea finds itself, you know, accidentally or mistakenly blundering into a confrontation, which would be catastrophic.</s>BLACKWELL: So there is this growing chorus of people who know the region, know the motives of Kim Jong-un who believe that he will not abandon his nuclear aspirations. Is there any official shift from the White House, from the U.N., that would shift to a policy of nonproliferation instead of attempting to convince Kim to abandon his nuclear program?</s>AMANPOUR: Well, one of the issues and one of the challenges for the U.S., analysts have basically described as having a policy that's, quote, "all over the map." This not just this administration. It goes back for decades. How does one have a coordinated, coherent way of dealing with North Korea as perhaps the United States and the West had dealing with then Soviet Union during the Cold War, two nuclear powers that had to figure out a way not to annihilate each other and the rest of the world. This is not exactly that right now, obviously. North Korea is not in that position of strength. The United States is much more powerful. The rest of the world's nuclear powers -- official nuclear powers are much more powerful. But in terms of a regional catastrophe, it would be catastrophic. There are millions and millions of people within range of a North Korean, you know, nuclear weapon and certainly conventional weapons in that region, South Korea, Japan, and elsewhere. So what most people on the -- in the West are saying and even you hear China saying, and Russia, but they have different conditions attached to it, that there has to be some kind of diplomacy that is not just about sticks but it's about carrots as well. There has to be some kind of conversation that is maybe, you know, unpalatable at this particular time but it has to go back to some of the times in the past where there has been semi-successful negotiations, notably under the Bill Clinton administration in the '90s and for a while under the George Bush administration when he, George W. Bush, was in his second term. So there needs to be some kind of redress of a situation that could otherwise get out of control. And you can see that within the Trump administration, there are different messages coming from President Trump himself and coming from the Pentagon and the secretary of Defense, James Mattis.</s>PAUL: Christiane, real quickly, you say that there obviously is -- both sides at some point want diplomacy. But who on both sides sits down at the table and facilitates that?</s>AMANPOUR: Well, you know, in a normal situation, you would have the president of the United States and all the other, you know, major world leaders deliver publicly a very coherent and stern message about what's going on and then develop and implement a coherent and collective strategic negotiation or moves forward, whether it's sanctions and negotiations or whatever they might come up with but something of a sort of coordinated world view of what's going on. And there's a problem there, of course, because -- and I don't mean these are the people who sit down at talks with North Korea. Obviously not presidential level. It has to start at a lower level like in any of these things in the past. But there's a problem because China and Russia also constantly vote in the Security Council at the U.N. to condemn North Korea's nuclear moves to impose sanctions, et cetera. But they kind of take North Korea's position, that yes, and the United States should stop its joint exercises with South Korea and get out of the Korean peninsula. So, you know, they sort of take a bit of the U.S. position. And then China, which has a huge amount of leverage, no matter what it says and what it looks like, it has a huge amount of leverage, has up until now concluded apparently to all intents and purposes that a nuclear North Korea may be less of a problem for China that a collapsed North Korean regime will be, you know, tens of millions of people who would then they believe flee into North Korea and destabilize that situation there. So the -- you know, the established nuclear powers of the five permanent members of the Security Council are not on the same page on all of this.</s>PAUL: All right. Christiane Amanpour, so appreciate your insight this morning, thank you.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. So despite the new sanctions and the threats of fire and fury, North Korea tested this powerful hydrogen bomb. How will President Trump react to the latest test?