North Korea: Yet Another Nuclear Weapon State?

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), known to the World as North Korea, has indicated that it has increased its ‘existing’ nuclear arsenal to counter a possible preemptive invasion by the United States. Earlier, the self-proclaimed nuclear power accused the United States of seeking to topple the government at the helm. It also feared that the joint US-South Korean military exercises could pose a preparatory war against the country. 

Not surprisingly, North Korea has declared itself a nuclear weapons power and claimed to have joined the ‘notorious’ nuke club on February 10 by suspending its participation in Six-party nuclear talks for an indefinite period, though it has not conducted a single nuclear weapon test until now. The announcement came from the North Korean Foreign Ministry when the regime snubbed the US attempt to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table. The statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, “[DPRK] had already taken the resolute action of pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and have produced nukes for self-defence to cope with the Bush administration's undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK”. On an earlier occasion in April 2003, the North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister admitted to having possessed nuclear weapons during the trilateral talks between delegations from the United States, China, and North Korea.

Way back in December 1985, North Korea had joined the NPT with the demand of removal of all US nuclear weapons deployed in neighbouring South Korea. After six years, in late 1991, then-President George Bush announced the withdrawal of at least a hundred tactical nuclear weapons from the South. The impasse came when the IAEA discovered discrepancies in North Korea's initial reports of its installations. However, the communist regime took almost a decade to quit NPT since Pyongyang announced its intention to withdraw from the non-proliferation regime in 1993, citing national security considerations. 

The question of whether the technology North Korea is using is indigenous or not remains a mystery and ambiguous. The leadership vehemently opposed the centrifuge connection in the face of revelations by the protagonist, Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan himself. Khan revealed last year that he had sold gas-centrifuge technology to North Korea, Libya, and Iran.

Informed sources stipulated North Korea’s strength to one or two crude nukes and believed that it may have reprocessed plutonium for at least half a dozen bombs from spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. According to a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), DPRK's arsenal has grown to an alarming level, with as many as 10 nuclear weapons. Pyongyang had restarted its plutonium enrichment program in 2002 after Washington accused North Korea of violating the “Agreed Framework” (AF) of 1994. Under the AF, Pyongyang agreed to freeze all its nuclear reactors and related facilities and to allow the UN nuclear watchdog to monitor its facilities. In exchange, Pyongyang was to receive two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors (LWRs) and annual heavy fuel oil shipments. 

As far as capability is concerned, most recently, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Porter Goss indicated while testifying before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that North Korea's nuclear weapons arsenal has grown substantially since the CIA’s January 2002 assessment. In addition to pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, Goss underscored that DPRK has active chemical and biological weapons programs. CIA's assessment notwithstanding, North Korea has several nuclear fuel cycle facilities capable of producing weapon-grade fissile material and nuclear bombs.

Since August 2003, three rounds of nuclear talks have been held with North Korea under the aegis of six-nation talks that have been hosted by China, with the US, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and North Korea participating in it. All of those talks were inconclusive, with the Bush administration’s call for a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North’s nuclear programme did not gain any result. Although North Korea refused to attend the last round of six-party talks last September, it has pledged to resume the stalled six-party talks earlier this year with some pre-conditions. It wanted the US President to adopt a friendlier attitude towards the so-called ‘axis of evil’. The United States has repeatedly refused to offer concessions to lure DPRK back to the talks. At the same time, the other three parties — China, South Korea, and Japan — have advocated a conciliatory approach to solving the stand-off and have urged the United States to be more flexible.

Now, the US is looking for new ways of forcing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons besides the option for a preemptive strike. A package with many ‘carrots’ may change the prevailing atmosphere or an economic sanction through the UN Security Council. However, the latter option is very unlikely, with China and Russia opposing the move. While the US administration has been considering North Korea a nuclear weapons state (NWs), its intelligence agency believed that the country could very well validate its weapon designs without conducting an actual test.