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N. Korea touts nuke complex in US warning
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North Korea said yesterday its main nuclear complex was operating and it was working to improve the “quality and quantity” of its weapons which it could use against the United States at “any time.”
The comments follow a declaration by North Korea in 2013 vowing to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that had been shuttered.
It marked the first acknowledgement since then that the plant, which has been the source of fissile material used in the country’s atomic weapons program, is operational, experts said.
“All the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, including the uranium enrichment plant and 5 MW graphite-moderated reactor, were rearranged, changed or readjusted and they started normal operation,” the state-run KCNA news agency said, quoting the atomic agency chief.
“If the US and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy toward the DPRK and behave mischievously, the DPRK is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time,” the director was quoted as saying.
DPRK is the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Innovations have been made to improve nuclear weapons “in quality and quantity as required by the prevailing situation,” the director was quoted as saying.
North Korea is believed to be working toward developing an intercontinental ballistic missile mounted with an atomic warhead that can hit targets in the mainland US.
Late on Monday, North Korea’s space agency said it was readying a new satellite for launch, indicating it may fire an upgraded long-range ballistic missile timed to around the 70th anniversary of its ruling party on October 10.
Any such launch would violate international sanctions although North Korea insists it would be part of a space program for peaceful purposes.
North Korea is believed by experts to have enough fissile material to build 12 or more nuclear weapons, and is believed by US and South Korean officials to be working to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to mount on a delivery vehicle.
North Korea conducted three nuclear tests between 2006 and 2013, drawing international condemnation.
Recent satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex indicated new activity there, according to a report last week by 38 North, a website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. The activities could be part of work to produce new nuclear material that would be a step toward adding to the country’s nuclear stockpile, 38 North said.
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