North Korea has evolved from being a regional menace to a “global threat, ” the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has said.
“I think the North Korean threat is a global one now. In the past people believed it was a regional one, that’s no longer the case, ” Amano, director general of the IAEA, told CNN.
“It is a global threat now and it combines nuclear weapons and missiles.”
The head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors and verifies seismic and nuclear activity around the globe, said North Korea’s test triggered “one of the biggest tremors ever recorded by our international monitoring system.”
“We’re talking about a magnitude of six, this is the highest we’ve ever recorded and this is a clear indication that the nuclear weapons program with North Korea is reaching a completely different level, ” Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary of the Vienna-based organization told CNN.
While the IAEA could not determine if the explosion came from a hydrogen bomb as North Korea claimed, Amano said the bigger yield of this latest test means “it is safe to assume North Korea is making significant progress.
