ON FEBRUARY 7th, North Korea fired an Unha-3 satellite-launch rocket into space. The UN Security Council unanimously condemned the exercise—which America, South Korea and Japan see as a part of a programme to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile—promising fresh sanctions. Experts believe that if modified to carry a 2,200lb (1,000kg) warhead instead of a satellite, the Unha-3 could reach Alaska and possibly Hawaii. Less clear is whether North Korea has made the strides it claims in miniaturising a nuclear warhead for the missile to carry.
The launch comes just a month after an announcement by Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young despot, that the country had detonated its first hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful and much more difficult to build than the atomic sort. Many outside observers agreed that the claim was far-fetched however: both the estimated explosion yield (six kilotons) and the magnitude of the earthquake that followed the blast (5.1) were much too small for a thermonuclear weapon.
But both tests are further reminders of how far the North’s nuclear-weapons programme has advanced through three generations of the ruling Kim family, despite outside efforts to block it. According to a recent estimate it may have as many as 100 weapons by 2020 if its programme is left uncurbed. So how to rein in Mr Kim? The UN Security Council has applied sanctions before, to little effect. Unless and until the country’s only ally, China, loses patience, little can deflect the rogue state from its chosen path.
