Kim Jong Un Claims North Korea Has Hydrogen Bomb

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un claims his country now has a hydrogen bomb.

"We managed to become a great nuclear power capable of defending the independence and national dignity of our homeland by mighty nuclear and hydrogen strikes,” he said according to RT.com, which cited a report on Thursday from the official Korean Central News Agency.

While North Korea repeatedly makes threats, often through its official news agency, this is believed to be the first time Kim has mentioned a hydrogen bomb, according to AFP.

North Korea is believed to have conducted at least three nuclear tests since 2006, the Associated Press reported earlier this year. However, some are skeptical over the claims that the nation has developed a hydrogen bomb.

One intelligence expert dismissed it as "rhetoric."

"We don't have any information that North Korea has developed an H-bomb," the unnamed intelligence official told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. "We do not believe that North Korea, which has not succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear bombs, has the technology to produce an H-bomb."

Others agreed.

"I think it's unlikely that they have an H-bomb at the moment," Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told Reuters. "But I don't expect them to keep testing basic devices indefinitely, either."