Rattle wrote:

...
A source in Beijing who is close to the North Korean regime said Pyongyang had detonated a neutron bomb, designed to release larger amounts of deadly radiation than other nuclear weapons. There was no immediate confirmation of the claim.

Neutron bomb? That doesn't sound right...

Why? N. Korea may well be interested in a bomb that kills people and doesn't destroy infrastructure (much). Think of South Korea. With neutron bombs they could clear it out and then move in and take it over without having to rebuild. The residual radiation from a neutron bomb doesn't last very long and doesn't result in much if any cancer down the road. It's a much "smarter" weapon to use in every way, unless your goal is complete obliteration for psychological reasons.

We're in a bad place relative to N. Korea right now. Ideally, everyone would have moved out of Seoul over the past couple decades so we could attack N. Korea without worrying about all the civilians in Seoul dying immediately. As it stands, we're stuck between sacrificing Seoul now but preventing DPRK from getting massively nuked up or waiting to see if something better comes along. I'm not optimistic.

RE: Reuters | N.Korea nuke test relatively small: scientists