While You Were Sleeping: North Korea “Perfected” A Hydrogen Bomb

North Korea successfully tested a hydrogen bomb on Sunday while we were sleeping, according to officials in the country. If confirmed, it would be the most powerful nuclear explosion ever achieved by the isolated country.

According to Gizmodo, things are moving quickly on the Korean peninsula, and there’s a lot we don’t know, including the details about what this reported US-South Korea “military response” will involve. But we have accumulated a round-up of what we do know—everything that happened on the other side of the world while America slept.

The explosion of North Korea’s hydrogen bomb was first picked up as an earthquake at exactly noon, local time. Measuring 6.3 on the richter scale by the US Geological Survey, such an explosion is at least 5 times stronger than any previous detonation performed by the country and roughly 8 times stronger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima during World War II. -Gizmodo

North Korean TV broadcasts in the country declared the nuclear test a “perfect success” of a “hydrogen bomb for [an] intercontinental ballistic rocket.” Other state media claimed that dictator Kim Jong-un had personally overseen the test and described the bomb as “a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with [a] great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

North Korea is claiming that the hydrogen bomb it tested is small enough to be fitted on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The rogue regime tested its first ICBM on July 4, 2017, though there isn’t any confirmation that the country has the ability to deliver a nuclear-tipped ICBM to the US mainland.

And the United States says it’s out of military options unless the world wants to see ten million South Koreans die.

Before departing the White House, top Trump advisor Steve Bannon gave an interview where he said that “until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons” there was no real military option available to the US. -Gizmodo

United States president Donald Trump and South Korea continue to seek options to prevent North Korea from creating a more powerful bomb.