North Korea probably posses the ability to mount nuclear warheads on missiles that can hit all of South Korea, a local military analyst said Wednesday.

Ham Hyung-pil, a senior researcher at state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), said at a academic gathering hosted by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies in Seoul, that Pyongyang may have developed the knowhow to place a nuclear weapon on its Rodong missiles.

The Rodong, already operational with the communist country‘s rocket forces, is derived from the Soviet Scud series of missiles and has a maximum range of 1,300-1,500 kilometers, which is sufficient to strike any place in South Korea and parts of Japan.

Its max warhead payload of around 1 ton is also larger than those found on the Hwasong and KN-02 type missiles. A heavier payload means less work needed to miniaturize the nuclear warhead.

“The North detonated its third nuclear device in February, and taking into account that it conducted more than 100 high-explosive tests since the 1980s, it probably has acquired the technology to miniaturize its nuclear arsenal to fit on a missile,” the researcher said. High explosive tests are needed to check the trigger mechanism of nuclear weapons.

He speculated that judging by the lapse of time, the North not only can make its nukes lighter and smaller, but they may be in the process of actually deploying nuclear warheads on its missiles.

Many international arms experts have said Pyongyang probably has fissile material to make 8-10 atomic weapons.

The KIDA researcher said that while Seoul warned it can launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korean missiles, and is setting up a so-called kill chain -- using all of its intelligence assets and detection capabilities to quickly find and eliminate threats -- the lack of its own nuclear deterrence means the country will have to rely more on the protection provided by the United States.

Related to the speculations made by Ham, David Albright at the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in February, that the North most likely possesses nuclear-deliverable weapons, although there is no concrete evidence to support this view.

He said in a article published on 38 North, a Website that aims to provide informed analysis on North Korea, that the U.S.

intelligence community has for some time given the North credit for mounting nuclear warheads on the Rodong, although not on intercontinental ballistic missiles able to reach the United States. (Yonhap News)