North Korea said yesterday that it has completed reprocessing thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods to extract plutonium to bolster its atomic stockpile, raising the stakes in an apparent effort to get the US into direct negotiations.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch that the country finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods, which experts say yields enough plutonium for at least one atomic bomb.
The North is believed to already be in possession of enough plutonium to make at least half a dozen nuclear weapons. The latest announcement raises concern that the regime could enlarge its atomic stockpile.
The announcement came a day after North Korea’s Foreign Ministry pressured Washington to accept its demand for direct nuclear talks.
North Korea restarted its once-mothballed nuclear facilities at its Yongbyon complex in April in anger over a UN rebuke of its rocket launch, which was denounced as a test of its long-range missile technology. It has also kicked out international nuclear monitors before conducting nuclear and missile tests.
In September, the North said it was in the final stage of reprocessing spent fuel rods. The North claimed at the time that it succeeded in uranium enrichment, which would give the communist regime a second way of building atomic bombs.
North Korea has been demanding direct talks with the US to resolve the nuclear standoff.
Washington has said it is willing to meet one-on-one with the North if it leads to the resumption of six-party talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the US
But the US has not made any decision on whether to hold direct talks, prompting Pyongyang to threaten to increase its nuclear arsenal unless its demand is met.
Meanwhile, North Korea has still not responded to the South’s offer of 10,000 tonnes of corn, Seoul said yesterday, amid news reports Pyongyang had asked for ten times as much food aid.
“As of Tuesday morning, there has been no official response from Pyongyang,” unification ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told journalists, eight days after the aid was announced.
South Korea’s offer of the corn worth some US$3.4 million, plus 20 tonnes of milk powder and medicine, would be the first government aid to its neighbor in almost two years.
Media reports have said the North asked for a 100,000-tonne rice shipment when the two sides held working-level talks on Oct. 16. The ministry has denied any specific amount was mentioned.
Experts say North Korea’s chronic food shortages are likely to worsen in the coming year as its rice and corn harvests have been damaged by bad weather.
Under previous liberal governments Seoul sent around 400,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of fertilizer a year across the border.
But shipments stopped after a conservative Seoul government took office and linked major aid to progress on nuclear disarmament, sparking a furious response from Pyongyang.
Hong Sang-young, director of civilian aid group the Korean Sharing Movement, said Pyongyang would find the South’s latest offer too small compared with past shipments.
“It must be in agony over whether to accept it or not. It may find the 10,000 tonnes of corn too tiny to start with under the current government,” Hong told said. “At the same time, it may see it awkward to turn it down outright as it is on the receiving end of humanitarian aid.”
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