South Korea yesterday confirmed the shutdown of North Korea's nuclear power plant, a signal that Pyongyang could be moving to double its supply of weapons-grade plutonium.
"We are treating this matter very seriously," said Kim Sook, head of the North American affairs bureau at the South Korean foreign ministry. "I learned that the halt to operations [at the plant] has been verified through various means," he said in an interview with a local radio station.
North Korea claimed in 2003 that it had reprocessed spent fuel rods from its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon complex, 90km north of the capital Pyongyang.
Experts said reprocessing of the 8,000 rods from the plant produced enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear bombs.
By reprocessing another batch of 8,000 rods, North Korea could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to allow it to double that number.
Selig Harrison, a US expert who visited Pyongyang earlier this month, said that senior North Korean leaders told him the country would start reprocessing the 8,000 spent fuel rods late this month.
The specialist from the Center for International Policy in Washington said the North Koreans were no longer interested in a step-by-step elimination of their nuclear programs in return for rewards.
Instead they would offer to freeze the production of nuclear bombs only if the US promised not to try to topple the communist regime, Harrison was told.
The controversial reactor at Yongbyon was frozen under a 1994 bilateral deal between the US and North Korea under which North Korea agreed to mothball an earlier nuclear program.
Washington believes that North Korea had already diverted enough bomb-grade plutonium at that time for up to two crude nuclear devices.
The 1994 deal collapsed after Washington accused North Korea in October 2002 of running a separate program based on enriched uranium to produce nuclear weapons.
North Korea raised the stakes by reopening the Yongbyon reactor, kicking out international monitors and claiming it possessed reprocessed spent fuel.
It said it would give up its nuclear weapons drive in return for rewards, but Washington refused to offer incentives.
Six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, the US and Japan aimed at ending the North's nuclear arms ambitions have stalled after three inconclusive rounds.
Harrison said Pyongyang appears to have hardened its position further and is not longer ready to bargain away its nuclear weapons and is only offering a freeze.
The development came as the US reportedly prepared to send Christopher Hill, the new assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, to South Korea, Japan and China for talks on the nuclear standoff.
Last week, his boss, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said North Korea was not the top US foreign policy issue.
The US has been trying to use China's influence to rein in North Korea, and Rice said Pyongyang's recent behavior, including its declaration that it had nuclear weapons, was merely a bid for attention.
"I do think the North Koreans have been, frankly, a little bit disappointed that people are not jumping up and down and running around with their hair on fire because [they] have been making these pronouncements," she said.
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