So he wrapped 200 tons of HE around a softball size sphere of plutonium in an attempt to detonate it? Think about that for a minute. This was a fizzle of a plutonium core. It worked, some. There was a reaction releasing alot of energy, but it didn't go boom. It fizzled. Sooner or later they will get one to go boom. Then what? Probably already has the necessary deuterium and a schematic (Soviet) to put it together. Enter the NK hydrogen bomb, just $200,000,000 asking price.
It just doesn't compute. I am not doubting the ability to NK to eventually produce a fission nuke, and without being usefully specific, that time could be fairly soon. But the amount of explosives req'd to compress/assemble the core of such a device is massively less than...tons. It's kilos. The explosive lens assembly and its detonation, is a very complex issue to work out. As is the initiator. I suspect NK will eventually get it.
This could have three or four ways been a fizzle, in the form of a badly initiated bomb, or even-isotope polluted Pu, or a few other things, spearately or together. This could have been a big pile of conventional explosives. I'm not confident anyone (outside of NK) knows, at least anyone who is credibly saying.
LOL, I kinda doubt that. Wish reporters had a tiny clue of how these things work. Then maybe we could get a story that is not full of impossible assertions stated as facts.