WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is raising doubts about North Korea's claim to have developed the capability to detonate a hydrogen bomb.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was reported Thursday as saying North Korea is a "powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate" a self-reliant hydrogen bomb to defend its sovereignty and dignity. The comments were carried by official Korean Central News Agency.
But White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the information the U.S. has access to "calls into serious question" those claims.
Still, Earnest says the U.S. is concerned about the North Korean government's destabilizing actions and its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon. He says the U.S. takes that risk "very seriously."
