In admitting to uranium enrichment after years of denial, North Korea is putting the US on notice that it will do whatever it takes to keep its nuclear program, analysts say.
Pyongyang said on Friday it was in the final stage of enriching uranium — a second way to make nuclear bombs besides its known plutonium program. It marked a sharp change of tone after a month of easing tensions.
The announcement came as the US point man on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, tours the region in hopes of laying the groundwork for new denuclearization talks — which North Korea bolted from in April.
While cautioning that Pyongyang’s intentions are notoriously opaque, analysts suspected that North Korea was anticipating that US President Barack Obama’s administration would eventually sit down for talks.
“These may be efforts to lay down some markers or establish a position on some of these issues that they may anticipate will come up,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Asia Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Obama administration has been pretty clear that the default position is to pursue diplomacy as an active tool to address these types of problems. It’s really the North Koreans that have put up roadblocks to that type of contact,” he said.
Since Obama took office, North Korean has tested an atom bomb and test-fired a series of missiles. But in recent weeks it freed two US reporters, reopened its borders to South Korean tourists and sent envoys to Los Angeles in hopes of resuming food aid.
Obama, while reaching out to US foes such as Iran and Cuba, has made few gestures to North Korea. The US State Department, which said it was “very concerned” by the latest developments, turned down a reported invitation by Pyongyang for Bosworth to visit.
Former US president George W. Bush’s administration first confronted North Korea in 2002 with allegations it was secretly enriching uranium, setting off a showdown.
North Korea initially boasted about uranium enrichment but then denied it in negotiations. Its latest admission came through a letter to the UN Security Council denouncing new sanctions.
Victor Cha, who served as Bush’s top adviser on North Korea, said the admission was “significant” as it showed that Pyongyang had brazenly defied earlier agreements not to enrich uranium.
Uranium work — also the focus of the West’s stand-off with Iran — can be conducted in small warehouses, which are difficult for foreign satellites to detect. By contrast, North Korea’s plutonium — used for its two nuclear tests — came from spent fuel rods at its closely watched Yongbyon reactor.
Until Friday’s statements, “experts believed the North was still years away from developing weapons from uranium,” said Cha, now an academic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.
Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said that if North Korea was truly in the final stages of uranium enrichment, it would have run a program secretly for years — not since the UN sanctions in April as stated.
“North Korea has two pages in its playbook — one is provocation, brinkmanship and the raising of tensions and the other is seemingly conciliatory gestures,” he said.
He voiced surprise that North Korea switched tone just after the election of Japan’s new center-left government. Some experts believe Japan may moderate its line on North Korea, which was the toughest in defunct six-nation talks.
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