ROK Foreign Minister: North Korea Began Uranium Enrichment Program in Mid-1990’s

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said North Korea likely began its controversial uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons development in 1996, soon after it had agreed to halt its nuclear program in a deal with the United States. In an interview with Yonhap, Yu said much remains unknown about the North’s uranium program and how advanced it is. But he said it is clear that the program was launched “quite early.

“It seems to me that the North began its enriched uranium program soon after the 1994 Geneva agreement, at least by 1996,” Yu said. [Joongang Ilbo]

It always possible that he’s just saying that under the duress of the neocons in the Obama Administration. Now here’s something I did not know:

In 2004, however, Hwang Jang-yop, a former secretary of the North’s Workers’ Party who defected to the South, told the Tokyo Shimbun that the North’s uranium program had begun in 1996. Hwang had said a senior munitions official had traveled to Pakistan to acquire the necessary technology.

The evidence just keeps on mounting:

Selig Harrison, call your office.