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North Korean TV appears to show early 'A-bomb photo'
North Korean TV footage of an arms and munitions industry conference appears to show the country's former leader Kim Jong-il inspecting one of the country's first ever atomic bombs.
A 30-minute bulletin showing the 12 December conference in the capital Pyongyang has North Korea watchers agog at the picture's appearance in the conference hall.
The photograph, never before seen in the West, is visible for only a few seconds as the camera sets the scene for the industry conference, attended by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, the son of the late Kim Jong-il. It hangs among others showing North Korea's "achievements" in arms production, alongside scale models of ballistic missiles.
Because of its fleeting appearance from a distance, experts are holding fire on a positive identification of the device as an atomic weapon. But the photograph has notable similarities to recent photographs of Kim Jong-un inspecting the country's first (claimed) hydrogen bomb.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday December 14 2017, @02:50PM (1 child)
It could be a real photo of him with a mockup bomb. I don't see what the big deal about having a photo is. We know they have the potential to make them. It doesn't matter hugely if it gets photo ops. No publicity picture is going to give away that much useful information anyway besides perhaps a disappointing lack of themey paint.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Friday December 15 2017, @12:26AM
If the mock-up is really close to what they are currently building, it means that their designs were pretty far along even way back then. If the mockup back then was next to something that barely resembles what today has - then you know that a lot of work has been done recently to bridge the gap in knowledge. This is an important piece of information as it tells you much about the current Kim. Whether this is all his work, or whether he's just taking credit for work done previously - and that also means if you wait another year or two - where will they be up to in development?