North Korea's new leader Kim Jong-un will likely order a third nuclear test or another missile launch this year to consolidate his military credentials, South Korea's state think tank warned Wednesday.

Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, has taken the helm of North Korea since his father, Kim Jong-il, died of a heart attack last month, representing the third generation of a dynastic dictatorship that has ruled Pyongyang since 1948.

Although the North's new leadership is expected to remain stable, at least for now, experts have speculated that economic difficulties and political factors may increase uncertainties in North Korea and the young Kim may have interest in staging another provocation to bolster internal unity.

"North Korea could raise tension by test-launching a missile and conducting a third nuclear test as Kim Jong-un needs to demonstrate his leadership and consolidate his grip on the regime,"

the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) said in the report.

The foreign ministry-affiliated institute warned of "military adventurism" by the young Kim.

"In particular, North Korea could conduct a test explosion of a uranium bomb to maximize the external effect and show off new achievements by Kim Jong-un," it said.

North Korea conducted two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 and is believed to have enough plutonium for at least a half dozen nuclear bombs. But many analysts said North Korea has yet to master the miniaturization technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

In 2010, the North stunned the world by revealing its industrial-scale uranium enrichment plant. Pyongyang claims the uranium enrichment program is for peaceful energy development, but outside experts believe that it would give the country a new source of fission material to make atomic bombs, in addition to its widely known plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.

The IFANS also predicted that the six-party talks on ending the North's nuclear program could resume in the first half of this year, but it will be difficult for the multilateral forum to make any "visible progress" on reining the North.

The six-nation talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, have been dormant since April 2009, when North Korea walked away from the negotiating table and conducted the second nuclear test a month later.

South Korea and the U.S. have said that North Korea must take concrete actions for denuclearization, including a monitored shutdown of the uranium enrichment facility, before the six-party talks could resume.

"North Korea will likely keep its stance that the issues of nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment should be dealt with through only direct negotiations with the U.S., separating the issues from the six-party talks," the report said.

This week, North Korean troops held a mass rally and pledged their allegiance to their new leader Kim Jong-un, in the latest public display of military support to his dynastic power succession.

"We will build a ten thousand-fold bulwark for protecting the supreme commander and become rifles and bombs to serve as Kim Jong-un first line lifeguards and Kim Jong-un first line death-defying corps," said Ri Yong-ho, the chief of the General Staff of the (North) Korean People's Army, according to the North's media.

The North's military also pledged to "wipe out the enemies to the last one if they intrude into the inviolable sky, land and seas of the country" even slightly, in apparent reference to South Korea and the U.S.

The North routinely claims South Korea and the U.S. have plans for a preemptive attack on the communist country. About 28,500 U.S.

troops are stationed in South Korea to deter any possible aggression from North Korea. (Yonhap News)