South Korea is investigating but has yet to confirm reports of fresh activity this month at North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said yesterday.
South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted US and South Korean officials as saying an American intelligence satellite detected fumes rising from a coal-fired boiler at the nuclear lab at Yongbyon. The fumes were traced on four days this month.
Yongbyon, about 90km north of the capital Pyongyang, contains a nuclear reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant at the center of the year-long crisis over the secretive communist state's attempts to build nuclear weapons.
"We are trying to confirm the activities, but at this stage I have no definitive information to disclose," Jeong told reporters at his weekly news conference in Seoul.
State Department spokesman Steve Pike said he had not heard of new activity in the Yongbyon facility.
"It's the first I've heard," Pike said.
JoongAng Ilbo quoted Seoul officials as saying the fumes were detected on Dec. 2, 3, 4 and 7, and that a truck was spotted travelling in and out of the premises of Yongbyon's five-megawatt nuclear reactor on Dec. 3.
The latest report comes as the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a second round of six-way talks on the nuclear dispute with North Korea to follow an inconclusive first round held in Beijing in August.
Jeong said that a nuclear crisis resolution proposal worked out last week by South Korea, the US and Japan had been conveyed to North Korea by China.
But he said North Korea had not given a reply -- a critical step in getting the talks started before the end of the year, which remains a goal of South Korea.
Echoing remarks on Wednesday by South Korea's Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan, Jeong said he didn't think a statement by North Korea on Tuesday calling the three-country proposal "greatly disappointing" represented Pyongyang's formal reply.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry proposed a deal on Tuesday under which it would freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for energy aid and other diplomatic concessions from Washington and regional powers.
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