NORTH KOREA lifted a whole mountain several metres off the ground with a mega-powerful hydrogen bomb, scientists have revealed.

The explosion was seventeen times more powerful than the atom bomb that wiped out the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War II.

It not only sent the mountain flying upwards, it also shifted it sideways by more than a foot (half a metre).

Space-based radar (above) showed the blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea’s mountainous north-west also created a crater 433ft (132 metres) wide.

The blast two years ago was the last of six that North Korea has carried out in a system of tunnels dug deep below Mount Mantap.

The site is about 230 miles north-east of Pyongyang and is believed to have been the North’s main nuclear facility — the only active nuclear testing site in the world.

Study chief Dr Kattumadam Sreejith, of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said: ‘Analysis revealed detailed surface displacements associated with the nuclear explosion.’

North Korea withdrew from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 2003.

It is the first time satellite data has been used to measure the power of the bomb tests it has been conducting.

Reporting the findings in Geophysical Journal International, researchers said: ‘The most recent test shifted the ground by a few metres.

‘We estimate it to be equivalent to 17 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.’

Dr Sreejith added: ‘Satellite-based radars are very powerful tools to gauge changes in earth surface, and allow us to estimate the location and yield of underground nuclear tests.’