N. Korea Claims 'Radioactive Tsumani' Weapon Test

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters file photo
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters file photo
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N. Korea Claims 'Radioactive Tsumani' Weapon Test

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters file photo
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Reuters file photo

North Korea claimed Friday to have tested a nuclear-capable underwater drone designed to generate a gigantic “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy naval strike groups and ports.
Analysts were skeptical that the device presents a major new threat, but the test underlines the North's commitment to raising nuclear threats.

The test this week came as the United States reportedly planned to deploy aircraft carrier strike groups and other advanced assets to waters off the Korean Peninsula. Military tensions are at a high point as the pace of both North Korean weapons tests and US-South Korea joint military exercises has accelerated in the past year in a cycle of tit-for-tat responses, AFP said.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said the new weapon, which can be deployed from the coast or towed by surface ships, is built to “stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami through an underwater explosion to destroy naval strike groups and major operational ports of the enemy.”

The North Korean report came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol pledged to make North Korea pay for its “reckless provocations” as he attended a remembrance service honoring 55 South Korean troops killed during major clashes with the North near their western sea border in past years.

The testing of the purported “nuclear underwater attack drone” was part of a three-day exercise that simulated nuclear attacks on unspecified South Korean targets, which also included cruise missile launches on Wednesday.

KCNA said that the drills were supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who condemned the US-South Korean drills as invasion rehearsals and vowed to make his rivals “plunge into despair.”

The drone is named “Haeil,” a Korean word meaning tidal waves or tsunamis. The North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper published photos of Kim smiling next to a large torpedo-shaped object at an unspecified indoor facility, but didn’t identify it.

Other photos published with the same article showed sea-surface tracks supposedly caused by the drone’s underwater trajectory and a pillar of water exploding up into the air, possibly caused by what state media described as an underwater detonation of a mock nuclear weapon carried by the drone.

KCNA said the North’s latest tests were aimed at alerting the United States and South Korea of a brewing “nuclear crisis” as they continue with their “intentional, persistent and provocative war drills.”

The US and South Korea completed an 11-day exercise that included their biggest field training in years on Thursday, and are preparing another round of joint naval drills that will reportedly involve a US aircraft carrier.

KCNA said the latest drills verified the operational reliability of the drone, which it said the North has been developing since 2012 and tested more than 50 times in the past two years, although the weapon was never mentioned before in state media until Friday.

KCNA said the drone was deployed off the North’s eastern coast on Tuesday, traveled underwater for nearly 60 hours, and detonated a test warhead at a target standing for an enemy port.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said that it’s impossible to verify North Korea’s claims about the drone’s capabilities or that it had tested the system dozens of times. But, he said, the North is intending to communicate that the weapon has enough range to reach all South Korean ports.

Ankit Panda, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, questioned the wisdom of North Korea devoting resources to the drone system as a means of delivery versus its ballistic missiles when it has limited amounts of nuclear materials suitable for weapons.

“This un-crewed underwater vehicle will be vulnerable to anti-submarine warfare capabilities if it were to deploy beyond North Korea’s coastal waters. It will also be susceptible to preemptive strikes when in port,” said Panda.

“Indeed, the US and South Korea would have incentives in a crisis to preempt any such systems before they could deploy.”

North Korea is believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads and may be capable of fitting them on older weapons systems, such as Scuds or Rodong missiles. However, there are different assessments on how far it has advanced in engineering those warheads to fit on the new weapons it has developed at a rapid pace, which might require further technological upgrades and nuclear tests.

Speaking to lawmakers on Thursday, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup said the North probably hasn’t yet mastered the technology to place nuclear arms on its most advanced weapons, although acknowledging that the country was making “significant progress.”

On Wednesday, North Korea also test-fired cruise missiles in launches that were detected and publicized by South Korea’s military. It also staged another nuclear attack simulation with a short-range ballistic missile on Sunday and flight-tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last week that may be able to reach the continental United States.

KCNA said Wednesday’s tests were of four cruise missiles and two different types. The missiles flew for more than two hours in patterns over the sea while demonstrating an ability to strike targets 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) and 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) away. It said the missiles’ mock nuclear warheads were detonated 600 meters (1,968 feet) above their targets, which supposedly verified the reliability of their nuclear explosion control devices and warhead detonators.

KCNA said Kim Jong Un was satisfied with the three-day drills and directed unspecified additional tasks to counter the “reckless military provocations” of his rivals, indicating North Korea will further ramp up its military displays.

He “expressed his will to make the US imperialists and the (South) Korean puppet regime plunge into despair” with powerful demonstrations of his military nuclear program to make his rivals understand “they are bound to lose more than they get” with the expansion of their joint drills.

Kim issued similar language Sunday after a test-firing of a short-range ballistic missile from what was possibly a silo dug into the ground. The North’s media said a mock nuclear warhead placed on the missile detonated 800 meters (2,624 feet) above water, an altitude that would maximize damage.

It was the first time North Korea publicized a nuclear detonation at such an altitude, though it has previously claimed to have simulated nuclear strikes on its rivals.

The North has fired over 20 ballistic and cruise missiles across 10 launch events this year as it tries to diversify its delivery systems and display the ability to conduct nuclear strikes on both South Korea and the US mainland.

North Korea already is coming off a record year in testing activity, with more than 70 missiles fired in 2022, as Kim accelerated a campaign aimed at negotiating badly needed sanctions relief from a position of strength and forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power.



Trump Tours Texas Flood Sites and Defends Officials amid Mounting Questions About Response

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at Lackland Air Force Base to board Air Force One and return to Washington after visiting Kerrville, Texas where they met with state and local leaders, first responders and victims of last week's flash flooding on July 11, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. (Getty Images/AFP)
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at Lackland Air Force Base to board Air Force One and return to Washington after visiting Kerrville, Texas where they met with state and local leaders, first responders and victims of last week's flash flooding on July 11, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Trump Tours Texas Flood Sites and Defends Officials amid Mounting Questions About Response

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at Lackland Air Force Base to board Air Force One and return to Washington after visiting Kerrville, Texas where they met with state and local leaders, first responders and victims of last week's flash flooding on July 11, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. (Getty Images/AFP)
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at Lackland Air Force Base to board Air Force One and return to Washington after visiting Kerrville, Texas where they met with state and local leaders, first responders and victims of last week's flash flooding on July 11, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. (Getty Images/AFP)

President Donald Trump on Friday toured the devastation from catastrophic flooding in Texas and lauded state and local officials, even amid mounting criticism that they may have failed to warn residents quickly enough that a deadly wall of water was coming their way.

Trump has repeatedly promised to do away with the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of his larger pledges to dramatically shrink the size of government, and he's fond of decrying officials in Democrat-run states hit by past natural disasters and tragedy.

But the president struck a far more somber and sympathetic tone while visiting America's largest Republican state, highlighting the heartbreak of what happened while effusively praising elected officials and first responders alike.

"The search for the missing continues. The people that are doing it are unbelievable," Trump, seated with officials around a table with emblazoned with a black-and-white "Texas Strong" banner, said at a makeshift emergency operations center inside an expo hall in Kerrville.

He later added, "You couldn’t get better people, and they’re doing the job like I don’t think anybody else could, frankly."

Since the July 4 disaster, which killed at least 120 people and left more than 170 missing, the president has been conspicuously silent on his past promises to shutter FEMA and return disaster response to the states. Instead, he's focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred in central Texas' Hill Country and its human toll.

"We just visited with incredible families. They’ve been devastated," the president said of a closed-door meeting he and first lady Melania Trump had with the relatives of some of those killed or missing.

Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though he has made slashing the federal workforce a centerpiece of his administration’s opening months. He spent a lot of time Friday discussing the victims from Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.

"They were there because they loved God. And, as we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort in the knowledge that God has welcomed those little beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven," Trump said.

The first lady described meeting "beautiful young ladies" from the area who she said gave her a "special bracelet from the camp in honor of all the little girls that lost their lives."

"We are here to honor them," she said, promising to return to support the camp in the future.

Before arriving for his tour, Trump approved Texas’ request to extend the major disaster declaration beyond Kerr County to eight additional counties, making them eligible for direct financial assistance to recover and rebuild.

"All across the country Americans’ hearts are shattered. I had to be here as president," he said. "All the beautiful souls, and we’re filled with grief and devastation. This, the loss of life. And unfortunately, they’re still looking."

Trump also tried to steer away from partisanship, even saying at one point, "I don’t want to say politics" while still bragging about reducing the cost of eggs around the country.

He also still insisted his administration "is doing everything it can to help Texas" and "we’ve got some good people" running FEMA. That is nonetheless a far cry from his call mere weeks ago to begin "phasing out" FEMA.

At the White House, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, similarly dodged questions Friday about FEMA’s future. He said that the agency has billions of dollars in reserves "to continue to pay for necessary expenses" and that the president has promised Texas, "Anything it needs, it will get."

"We also want FEMA to be reformed," Vought said. "The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government."

On the ground in devastated communities, meanwhile, some state and local officials have faced questions about how well they were prepared and how quickly they acted, including if warning systems might have given more people time to evacuate.

Asked about such concerns during his appearance at the operations center in Kerrville, Trump called a reporter "evil" and said he thought "everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances."

"I admire you, and I consider you heroes," Trump said of the officials around him.

He also praised a long list of Texas Republicans and had especially kind words for Rep. Chip Roy, who represents some of the hardest-hit areas. A staunch conservative, Roy initially opposed Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending package but ultimately supported it.

"He’s not easy, but he’s good," Trump said of Roy. The congressman, for his part, bristled at questions about authorities' flood response, calling the question about inadequate flood warnings "ridiculous."

The visit began with Air Force One landing in San Antonio and Trump deplaning in a suit while the first lady wore more casual clothing — though both wore ball caps against the heat. The Trumps then boarded a helicopter to Kerrville and saw the flooding aftermath from the air, before meeting with victims' families and first responders.

Roads in the center of town were shut down, and people lined the streets, some wearing Trump hats and T-shirts and waving American flags. Green ribbons recognizing the lives lost at Camp Mystic were tied around trees, poles and along bridges, and marquees featured slogans such as "Hill Country Strong" and "Thank you first responders."

Trump won Kerr County with 77% of the vote last year.

Harris Currie, a rancher from Utopia, Texas, near Kerrville, said the flood devastation can be fully understood only by seeing it first-hand.

"Pictures do not do it justice," Currie said.

Asked what officials on the ground needed most urgently from federal sources, Kerr County Commissioner Jeff Holt, who also is a volunteer firefighter, stressed the need for repairs to nonworking phone towers and "maybe a little better early warning system."

Trump himself has suggested that a warning system should be established, though few details have been offered on what that might eventually entail.

Friday's visit was far different from the other times the first couple visited natural disaster sites, during Trump's first weekend back in the White House in January. They toured North Carolina to scope out damage from Hurricane Helene and saw the aftermath of wildfires in Los Angeles, and the president sharply criticized the administration of his predecessor, President Joe Biden, and officials from deep-blue California.

"We’ll be helping you from Washington, DC, like no other president would," Trump said Friday. "The state of Texas, No. 1 they do it right and they've done it right for a long time. And it's a very special place to me."