North Korea Trumpets Advanced Nuclear Facilities

(Nov. 30) -- North Korea described in detail today the advanced state of its nuclear program, boasting that it has thousands of centrifuges dedicated to uranium enrichment.

While it's not clear whether the centrifuges could produce weapons-grade material, the claims are sure to spook officials in the U.S., South Korea and even China, which -- according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks -- is growing increasingly frustrated with its ally's erratic behavior.

Pyongyang's account of its nuclear capability raises the stakes in a regional crisis that culminated last week in the North's shelling of a South Korean island, killing four people. China has refused to condemn the North's actions but is clearly fearful of the possibility of a conflict on its southeastern border. On Monday, it called on fellow members of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks -- North Korea, South Korea, the U.S., Russia and Japan -- to hold an emergency session.

South Korea and the U.S., however, have refused to resume talks, which have been stalled since April 2009, saying such a step would reward North Korea for its provocative actions. "Without an understanding and agreement from the North Koreans to both end their behavior as they exhibited last week but also to come to the table with a seriousness of purpose on the de-nuclearization issue -- without that seriousness of purpose, [the talks would just be] a PR activity," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday.

The North's latest atomic announcement appeared in the state-run daily Rodong Sinmun. "The construction of a light water reactor is brisk in [North Korea], and a modern factory for uranium enrichment equipped with thousands of centrifuges is operating to supply fuel to them," the newspaper reported, according to the government-controlled Korean Central News Agency. "The development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes to meet the need for electricity will be stepped up in the future."

Those claims, while unverified, appear to confirm a report made earlier this month by Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University scientist. He visited the Yongbyon nuclear complex, some 60 miles north of Pyongyang, at the invitation of the North Korean regime this month and saw hundreds of centrifuges producing low-enriched uranium. Uranium enrichment would offer the North a second way to produce nuclear bombs, in addition to its existing plutonium-based program.

At low levels, uranium can be used in reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in weapons. Hecker said the plant appeared to be intended for civilian nuclear purposes, but acknowledged that the fuel could be further enriched and potentially used in warheads.

Analysts suspect that Pyongyang's invitation to Hecker, today's announcement and the recent bombardment are designed to scare the U.S. and other nations into softening their hard-line approach to North Korea and accepting the country as a nuclear power.

"For the last two years, both Washington and Seoul have tried to ignore [North Korea's leaders]," Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Kookmin University, wrote on the East Asia Forum website, "so now they use both artillery and centrifuges to say, 'We are here, we are dangerous and we cannot be ignored. We can make a lot of trouble, but also we behave reasonably if rewarded generously enough.'"

There's no sign, though, that the Obama administration will soften its policies anytime soon. And as the latest cache of WikiLeaks documents reveals, Pyongyang's grandstanding and troublemaking is also annoying its only major ally, China. An April 2009 cable detailing a lunch between Dan Piccuta, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and China's Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei records how the Chinese official called North Korea a "spoiled child" acting up to win the attention of an "adult."

A second cable from October 2009 saw He downplay the significance of an upcoming visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to the North Korean capital. "We may not like them," he told U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, "[but] they [North Korea] are a neighbor."

Further signs of China's dismay with Pyongyang can be found in a June 2009 cable from the U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Richard Hoagland. He noted that his Chinese counterpart, Cheng Guoping was "genuinely concerned by North Korea's recent nuclear missile tests. 'We need to solve this problem. It is very troublesome,' he said, calling Korea's nuclear activity a 'threat to the whole world's security.'"

Chinese officials also aired their gripes to senior members of the South Korean government. In February this year, the South's Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo told America's ambassador in Seoul, Kathleen Stephens, that younger members of China's Communist Party no longer viewed North Korea as a useful ally and didn't want a conflict to erupt on the peninsula.

"Citing private conversations during previous sessions of the six-party talks, Chun claimed [two high-level Chinese officials] believed Korea should be unified under ROK [South Korea] control," Stephens wrote. "The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state -- a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders."