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Pyongyang Plans to Restart Reactor to Supply Weapons Program; Move Follows Washington's Flexing of Military Muscle
North Korea said it would restart its Yongbyon nuclear plant to provide material for its weapons program and electricity. John Kerry said the U.S. will defend itself and allies from any threat from the North.
A photo series from June 2008 photo show a cooling tower being demolished at North Korea's nuclear plant in Yongbyon.
Kyodo/Reuters
North Korea said it would restart its only nuclear reactor to provide plutonium for its weapons program, further ratcheting up tensions on the Korean peninsula and drawing swift international criticism.
“Nuclear threats are not a game,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a news conference in Andorra. “The current crisis has already gone too far.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called the North’s recent belligerent rhetoric “unacceptable” and said the U.S. will defend itself as well as South Korea and Japan from any threat from the North.
Experts said it would take many months for North Korea to get the reactor operational again and much longer to extract enough plutonium to make weapons. The reactor at the Yongbyon plant, 55 miles north of Pyongyang, was closed in 2007, and the North Koreans destroyed the cooling tower the following summer as part of an aid-for-disarmament deal that soon collapsed.
The North’s move came after rapidly deteriorating relations between Pyongyang and Seoul and after several symbolic but muscular U.S. military maneuvers on the Korean peninsula.
Defense experts said the Obama administration’s flexing of military muscle has so far had the intended effect of reassuring Seoul, but that a risk remains that rising U.S. military pressure could provoke Pyongyang into a rash move.
In addition to flying B-52 and B-2 bombers over South Korea and putting a pair of F-22 fighter planes on display, the U.S. also has begun to reinforce regional defenses, moving two guided missile destroyers into position off the coast of South Korea to boost missile defenses.
Administration officials have defended their approach as necessary, given recent advances in North Korea’s weapons capabilities as well as the need to reassure a more nationalistic government in Seoul that Washington takes the threat seriously.
Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the U.S. was “in the business” of assuring South Korea that the U.S. will defend them. “We are looking for the temperature to be taken down on the Korean peninsula,” he said.
Michael Green, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who oversaw Asian affairs at the White House during the George W. Bush administration, also praised the current get-tough approach with North Korea. “I think it was appropriate and well-coordinated with South Korea and Japan,” Mr. Green said.
Pyongyang’s announcement on Tuesday was quickly criticized by its neighbors.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman called Pyongyang’s announcement “very regrettable.”
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had expressed its “regret” over Pyongyang’s declaration, though he reiterated Beijing’s previous hesitant approach on international sanctions, saying they “cannot solve the problem fundamentally.”
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Speaker Yoshihide Suga told reporters that restarting the Yongbyon nuclear plant “would be a grave concern for Japan.”
The U.N.’s Mr. Ban urged North Korea again “to fully abide by the relevant Security Council resolutions and refrain from making further provocative measures.”
Satellite imagery in recent months has shown construction work at the Yongbyon plant but it isn’t clear if North Korea has already started work to put its reactor back online.
Many outside analysts believe North Korea sees its nuclear threat as a negotiating tool to force the U.S. and other countries to provide it with money and security guarantees, and restarting its 1980s-era reactor would add further pressure to the North’s foes.
“I consider this a pretty serious move by Pyongyang in the series of steps it has been taking to push the U.S. toward some form of negotiation,” said Narushige Michishita, an associate professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
The five-megawatt reactor was North Korea’s only source of plutonium for its weapons program. North Korea revealed a uranium-enrichment facility at the plant in 2010, another route to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons. North Korea said through its state news agency that work to restart all facilities at Yongbyon will be “put into practice without delay.”
North Korea has said repeatedly in recent days that its nuclear weapons program is now nonnegotiable and will be built up in order to provide security from what it sees as threats from the U.S. and South Korea. On Feb. 12, North Korea staged its third test of a nuclear weapon, a move that triggered an escalation in tensions on the peninsula and was followed by a series of provocative threats from Pyongyang.
North Korea is thought to have enough plutonium-based fissile material for as many as a dozen small bombs. It isn’t clear if it has been able to develop a uranium-based bomb, but experts have speculated that it used uranium in its February test.
The uranium-enrichment facility at Yongbyon is North Korea’s only declared such facility, but experts suspect Pyongyang may have other enrichment centers.
North Korea has threatened to attack Washington with a nuclear weapon but it isn’t thought to be able to mount a nuclear weapon on a missile yet, or to be able to hit the U.S. mainland.
Since its first test of a nuclear bomb in 2006, North Korea has repeatedly asked the U.S. and other major countries to recognize it as a nuclear-weapons state and negotiate with it as an equal power.
“North Korea wants to show its willingness to become a nuclear power not only verbally but also in action,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul.
North Korea also said on Tuesday the Yongbyon reactor would provide electricity for the energy-starved country. The nation has frequent power outages because of its weak energy infrastructure.
–Christopher Rhoads, Andrew Browne and Eleanor Warnock contributed to this article.
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