North Korea said yesterday it had started reprocessing spent fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium, in an apparent response to international punishment against its controversial rocket launch.
The statement came hours after the UN slapped sanctions on three North Korean firms accused of backing missile development, in its first concrete action against Pyongyang over the April 5 rocket launch.
“The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant began as declared in the foreign ministry statement dated April 14,” a foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency.
“This will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defense in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from the hostile forces,” the spokesman said.
North Korea on April 14 announced it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons program in protest at the UN's statement condemning the launch.
Pyongyang says it put a satellite into orbit but the US and its allies say it conducted a disguised long-range ballistic missile test.
The North had been disabling parts of the Yongbyon nuclear complex as agreed under a February 2007 six-nation deal involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan.
But six-party negotiations stalled last December because of disputes about ways to verify its declared nuclear activities.
Analysts say it will take three to four months before the North completes reprocessing some 8,000 spent fuel rods from the reactor in Yongbyon to obtain plutonium.
“It will then have produced some 6 to 8kg of weapons-grade plutonium, which can be used to produce one or two bombs,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.
Pyongyang, which carried out its first nuclear test in 2006, put the size of its plutonium stockpile at 31kg when it handed over a nuclear declaration in June.
If all had been turned into weapons, the North might have six to eight bombs, experts say.
The move by the UN sanctions committee bans transactions and calls on UN member-states to freeze the assets of two defense-related companies — Korea Mining Development Trading Corp and Korea Ryonbong General Corp — along with the Tanchon Commercial Bank.
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