PYONGYANG — Interest in the size of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is growing after the regime’s state-run news agency released a video on Tuesday showing leader Kim Jong Un playing with a tiny missile purportedly fitted with a miniature nuclear tip.
“My weapon may be small by Western standards, but it can destroy any capitalist-imperialist man or woman,” Kim says in the video to a group of applauding generals.
The Korean Central News Agency reports that the missile, which is about two-and-a-half times longer than the average tampon, is capable of traveling over 2,500 meters and can deliver a blast equal to 350 microtons of TNT, enough to blow up an entire ox cart.
“If Bottom Korea and the United States continue to threaten Top Korea, we will have no choice but to demonstrate the ferocious power of what my scientists have nicknamed the ‘Pocket Rocket,’” Kim says. “We have many non-conventional ways of getting this quiet little device into you, so you’d never see it coming, only feel the burning pain.”
Until recently, North Korea had been unable to develop a missile capable of resisting the intense heat of re-entering the atmosphere, but according to intelligence reports, scientists in the reclusive state have created a durable latex covering that would protect the tiny weapon from prematurely exploding before it gets inside its target.