N.Korea can build a nuclear bomb a year: ex US defence chief

Report: N.Korea increases flight drills despite fuel pinchSeoul (AFP) Dec 29, 2010 - A North Korean jet has crashed as the country intensified air force exercises following its attack last month on a South Korean frontline island which sent tensions soaring, a newspaper said Wednesday. A MiG fighter disappeared off radar screens last week as the impoverished communist state held unusually extensive winter flight drills, the Korea JoongAng Daily said, quoting a military source. North Korea usually keeps flight drills to a minimum because of severe fuel shortages. The paper said there had been a 150 percent increase in the number of military drills involving all three services compared to December 2009. "It shows that the North Korean military has been very tense after the attack on Yeonpyeong Island," it quoted the source as saying. A defence ministry spokesman declined to comment on military intelligence matters. The North also carried out a corps-scale live-fire drill in response to a joint live-fire exercise by South Korea's army and air force last Thursday, Yonhap news agency said earlier this week. The news agency said the North has test-fired artillery and multiple-rocket launchers five times this month alone. The Korea JoongAng Daily said there have been frequent sightings of North Korean submarines near the disputed Yellow Sea border and artillery was moved nearer to the coast. The South has staged a series of military exercises, including one with the United States, since the North shelled the island near the Yellow Sea border on November 23 and killed four people, including two civilians.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NKorea_can_build_a_nuclear_bomb_a_year_ex_US_defence_chief_999.html Tokyo (AFP) Dec 29, 2010 Former US defence chief William Perry said North Korea was capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tension, in an interview published Wednesday. Perry, who served as defence secretary under president Bill Clinton, told the Nikkei daily that the US government should review its policies towards North Korea and impose economic sanctions to reiterate its stance against Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.
Then, Washington should coordinate policies with Seoul and Tokyo before eventually sending a special envoy for direct talks with Pyongyang, Perry told the Nikkei.
Perry suggested former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former US senator Sam Nunn, an expert on nuclear arms reduction, as possible candidates for such talks, the Nikkei said.
The interview was released in Japanese, with no original English text immediately available.
If North Korea dedicated all of its recently unveiled uranium enrichment facility to making weapons-grade fuel, it could build one nuclear bomb a year, Perry told the paper.
Perry said he had been briefed by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who recently toured a new uranium enrichment plant with 2,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex.
The facility is likely designed for making fuel for a civilian reactor and not bombs, but there is no way to confirm whether North Korea has another facility to build nuclear weapons, Perry said.
The former defence chief said he still believed in diplomatic solutions to the North Korean crisis.

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S.Korea must improve offer to win nuke deal: Turkish envoy

Seoul (AFP) Dec 27, 2010 South Korea must make an improved offer if it wants to secure a project to build a Turkish nuclear power plant, the country's ambassador to Seoul said Monday. Erdogan Iscan said negotiations that began in March effectively halted after last month's G20 summit in Seoul, when the two sides failed to settle key differences.
"The plan offered by South Korea did not meet Turkey's expectations," he told Yonhap news agency by phone. The embassy confirmed his comments.
South Korea operates 20 reactors, which generate 30 percent of its electricity needs, and is eager to export its expertise as a new growth engine for the economy.
In December 2009 a South Korean-led consortium won a 20.4 billion dollar contract to build four nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates, and Seoul hoped to cap this with a deal with Ankara.
But the ambassador told Yonhap the price of electricity was one of three or four major sticking points that held up progress, although he did not elaborate.
Iscan said Turkey has not closed the "Korean file" on the bid to build the Sinop nuclear power plant on the Black Sea coast, but has started formal negotiations with Japan.
He said Turkey cannot delay too long since rapid economic growth is causing energy demand to rise by an average four percent every year.
Turkey wants both the Sinop plant and the Akkuyu plant in the south of the country, that was won by Russia, to go into operation in 2018-2020.
Iscan said that if Seoul decides to improve its offer, Ankara will review it as a competitive bid and consider it along with the proposal made by Tokyo.

S. Korea's first nuclear repository goes into operation

Nuclear-waste repository goes online in South Korea
Korea Radioactive Waste Management started up its nuclear-waste repository in Gyeongju, South Korea, by accepting the first load of intermediate-level waste from the Uljin plant. "The waste can be held safely in the temporary holding area until the underground facility is completed in late 2012," the company said. The Korea Herald (Seoul)/Yonhap News Agency (South Korea)

Alleged North Korean Reactor Flouts U.N., South Says

If North Korea is indeed constructing a light-water nuclear reactor, it would be in contravention to U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting the aspiring nuclear power from any nuclear work, South Korea's top diplomat said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 15).
South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said to journalists,"that would be running counter to U.N. resolutions and it is obvious that it wouldn't be conducive to the current situation," the Yonhap News Agency reported.
Siegfried Hecker, a former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, this week said the North was building the experimental reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. Hecker was returning from a trip to the isolated state when he made the remarks.
Kim said additional time is required to probe Hecker's report as the Stalinist state has no background in constructing light-water reactors.
He also disputed Pyongyang's repeated assertion that it has the right to develop civilian atomic power, saying the North gave up that right when it withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 (Yonhap News Agency I, Nov. 15).
Responding to the light-water reactor report, the U.S. State Department yesterday again called on Pyongyang to demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization, Yonhap reported.
"We expect North Korea to live up to its international obligations," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "As it does, we are prepared to have conversations with North Korea about its long-term requirements. But first and foremost, North Korea has to live up to its stated commitment" (Hwang Doo-hyong, Yonhap News Agency II, Nov. 15).
The Obama administration has refused calls to return to the stalled six-nation talks -- which also involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, and Russia -- until Pyongyang shows it is sincere about nuclear disarmament. Washington fears a repeat performance from the North whereby Pyongyang takes some limited steps toward denuclearization only to reverse course once it has extracted some international concessions.
North Korea pulled out of nuclear negotiations in April 2009 and one month later detonated its second nuclear test device. That action earned it heightened U.N. Security Council sanctions that are thought to have left the already impoverished nation badly weakened.
Meanwhile, North Korea's state-controlled media yesterday announced former U.S. State Department official Morton Abramowitz had traveled to Pyongyang with a retinue of U.S. experts on North Korea. No further information was provided, Yonhap reported (Yonhap News Agency III, Nov. 15).
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20101116_4622.php

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• N. Korea has begun building light-water nuclear reactor (ctv.ca)
• Report: NKorea begins building light-water reactor (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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• South Korea reports huge rise in defectors from the North (guardian.co.uk)
• Report: N. Korean defectors reach 20,000 and counting (cnn.com)
• Former US envoy pessimistic on N.Korea nuclear weapons (alternet.org)

South Korea favors short-range missiles

South Korea favors short-range missiles

South Korea said it favors a joint U.S-Korean missile defense system rather than the United States-led plan involving the purchase of longer range missiles. South Korea's anti-missile system, under the Korea Air Missile Defense program, is designed to protect the south from short-range missiles fired by North Korea while the U.S. system uses missiles to protect against medium- and long-range ballistic missile threats.
"South Korea and the U.S. will discuss intelligence sharing and operation of means regarding the missile defense system so as to protect the Korean Peninsula from the threats of North Korean nuclear weapons and its weapons of mass destruction at the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee," the ministry said in a statement.
"This does not mean that we will join the U.S. missile defense system. This means we will strengthen cooperation with the U.S. Forces Korea in the sharing of intelligence and operation of available assets to effectively respond to threats from North Korean ballistic missiles."
North Korea has short-range Scud and Rodong missiles with a range of around 850 miles and is thought to be developing longer-range Taepodong missiles that could reach the United States. The Taepodong-2, which on paper has the ability to reach the nearest Alaskan shore, was test-launched in 2006 but blew up after a flight of less than a minute.
Seoul has been careful about choosing its missile defense options for fear of antagonizing China, a staunch ally of North Korea. Any decision to acquire longer range missiles that also could reach Chinese cities might seriously ramp up military tensions in the region.

South Korean Reprocessing Bid Under Discussion from GSN Daily News

The United States and South Korea are in "very technical" discussions on Seoul's bid for authorization under a new nuclear cooperation treaty to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, a senior Obama administration official said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 26).
"Let me just say that that's an issue of ongoing diplomacy between the two sides, very technical," the Yonhap News Agency quoted U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell as saying. "We're working closely to ensure that there is an understanding of what expectations are, not only to the United States, but other authorities associated with this going forward."
The two allies' decades-old atomic trade deal, due to expire in March 2014, prohibits South Korea from reprocessing used plutonium or enriching uranium -- two processes that can be used to generate weapon material as well as fuel for civilian use. South Korea has vied for the right under a new agreement to use pyroprocessing techniques -- an experimental system that advocates say is more resistant to proliferation as it keeps the plutonium combined with other materials.
Washington and Seoul "discussed a proposed joint study of nuclear power reactor spent fuel disposition options, including pyroprocessing," the State Department said. "They agreed that technical experts would meet soon to work out the scope of the study and the venue and schedule for completing it.
"Both sides expect the new agreement to ensure the continuance and further development of the robust bilateral cooperation they have enjoyed in atomic energy for more than fifty years, as well as to further contribute to the strengthening of their alliance by enhancing cooperation in nuclear research and development, industry and commerce in the future," the department's statement adds (Hwang Doo-hyong Yonhap News Agency, Oct. 26).
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20101027_9694.php

South Korea Must Counter North's WMD, Official Says

South Korea Must Counter North's WMD, Official Says

from GSN Daily News

A senior South Korean security official said today the nation needs an arsenal of conventional weapons that would counter North Korea's WMD capabilities, the Yonhap News Agency reported (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2009).
"Unless North Korea gives up its quest for weapons of mass destruction, South Korea will not be able to overcome its military inferiority to the North," Lee Sang-woo, who leads the Presidential Commission for National Security Review, said during an event in Seoul.
"South Korea must have non-nuclear, precision-strike capabilities and that would be the only way to curb and incapacitate the North's weapons of mass destruction," he added.
Lee did not offer additional details on the weapons he believes the South must possess for this mission.
While U.S. and South Korean forces in the Asian state are seen as stronger than the North's military, there are increasing worries about Pyongyang's missiles and its suspected biological and chemical weapons stockpiles, Yonhap reported. The Stalinist state also reportedly holds a stockpile of plutonium that could be used to power six nuclear weapons (see related GSN story, today).
There have apparently been no U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea since 1992 (Yonhap News Agency, Sept. 15).