North Korean Leader Hints At Development Of Hydrogen Bombs

North Korea is claiming to have developed its own hydrogen bomb, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reports Thursday citing the country’s leader Kim Jong-Un.

"We have managed to become a great nuclear power capable of protecting the independence and national dignity of our Motherland with the might of strikes by nuclear and hydrogen bombs," Kim Jong-Un was quoted by the KCNA agency as saying, noting the North Korean leader delivered the speech during his visit to an ordnance factory in the capital of Pyongyang.

Also, Kim Jong-Un noted that "the country needs to bolster its defense sector".

However, there has been no official confirmation that North Korea had actually developed and manufactured a hydrogen bomb.

Meanwhile, an official at South Korea's intelligence agency told Yonhap news agency that there was no evidence that the North had hydrogen bomb capacity, and believed Kim was speaking rhetorically.

In 2005, N. Korea had declared that the country had created nuclear weapons. The country has since conducted underground nuclear tests three times, in 2006, 2009 and 2013, amidst uproar by the international community.

A hydrogen bomb is a nuclear weapon that uses energy from a primary nuclear blast to ignite a secondary nuclear fusion.