When an American scientist returned from Pyongyang to report that North Korea had started a uranium-based path to nuclear weapons at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, experts immediately assumed that the North must be working elsewhere to enrich uranium as well. Now comes the unofficial-official answer from the U.S. and South Korean governments: well, duh.
On Monday, a South Korean intelligence official told the Chosun Ilbo that Washington and Seoul suspected "three or four locations" to be uranium-enrichment sites besides Yongbyon. An anonymous U.S. government senior official added to the Financial Times, "I think one has to assume that there are today additional undeclared enrichment-related facilities." It's doubtful that they know for certain, given the difficulties intelligence agencies have in penetrating hermetic North Korea, but that's the working presumption.
Last month, Siegfried S. Hecker, a former Los Alamos National Laboratories director, recounted how North Korean officials unexpectedly showed him a 200-centrifuge uranium-enrichment operationat Yongbyon, a capability that he said "significantly exceeds my estimates." Almost immediately, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security warned that the apparent speed with which the North built the enrichment facility suggests "this may not be the first gas centrifuge plant that North Korea has built."
All this flies in the face of international sanctions to stop or even slow Pyongyang's nuclear efforts. National Security Council's top nuke expert, Gary Samore, told the New York Times that another big concern is that North Korea will sell its nuclear technology: it helped Syria construct a nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007. In Samore's estimation, the U.S. believes North Korea's nuclear program is more advanced -- and resistant to covert sabotage -- than Iran's.
The Obama administration's diplomatic strategy appears to be hitting a wall. It's announced that it doesn't want to restart multilateral negotiations with North Korea just yet, lest it look like it's rewarding bad behavior. But the Bush administration tried that stance too, and it led to an expanded North Korean nuclear arsenal. Instead, Team Obama wants China to use its leverage over its North Korean client, but a recent trip to the region from Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was met with Chinese rebuke and even ridicule. A new State Department-White House team is on a trip to China this week, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will make the same trip in January -- part of a broad Pentagon effort to restart military ties with the Chinese -- partially designed to get the Chinese on board with pressing North Korea.
Meanwhile, the North Koreans have shelled South Korean positions, sending South Korean politics into a panic. An unofficial U.S. envoy, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, left for North Korea yesterday on a self-described mission to "try to get North Korea to calm down a bit." We'll see if his North Korean counterparts send him home with boasts of new enrichment sites far from Yongbyon.
Photo: Institute for Science and International Security
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