Rogue State North Korea 'Has Three Nuclear Bombs'

January 6, 2002
IAIN POPE

NORTH Korea may already have up to three nuclear bombs, senior intelligence officials in South Korea warned last night.

Experts fear that the North Koreans secretly hid up to 22kg of plutonium, which was used to build the devices, before UN inspections of their facilities began in the early 1990s.

Shin Kuhn, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, said yesterday: "We have information that there is a possibility that the North extracted 7kg to 22kg of plutonium... and built up one to three nuclear weapons."

However, Shin said Seoul had no information relating to the North’s most recent nuclear programme, based on enriched uranium.

North Korea alarmed the world when it announced last month that it would reactivate its mothballed plutonium-based nuclear programme, saying it needed to restart a reactor to generate electricity.

It has removed monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, expelled the UN inspectors and signalled it may quit a global nuclear arms control treaty.

The United States has already warned that the complex could also be used to build nuclear weapons. America believes North Korea has two such devices.

The claims came as diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the growing international crisis were stepped up last night. South Korean officials are to meet with Russian counterparts in Moscow today and are expected to try to sell a plan in which Washington guarantees the security of the communist North and resumes oil shipments in return for North Korea abandoning any nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea reiterated again last night that Washington must take the first step by signing a non-aggression pact that guarantees the US won’t attack the isolated country.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has already indicated that Washington will not compromise, arguing that North Korea agreed to a nuclear freeze in 1994.

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