ROK Defense Minister: N. Korea Steps Up Uranium Enrichment

I can only thank God for Chris Hill, whose Jedi mind tricks completely, verifiably, and irreversibly disarmed these people in the nick of time … not:

North Korea appears to be enriching uranium, potentially giving the state that has twice tested a plutonium-based nuclear device another path to making atomic weapons, South Korea’s defense minister said on Tuesday.

“It is clear that they are moving forward with it,” Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee told a parliamentary hearing, adding such a programme was far easier to hide than the North’s current plutonium-based activities.  [Reuters]

Isn’t anyone going to ask David Albright or Selig Harrison about any of this?  Because for once, I’m actually interested in hearing what they have to say.  Surely this is somehow related to Barack Obama’s secret plan to go to war based on false pretenses because David Geffen wants Kim Jong Il’s movie studio.

You may be saying by now:  so what?  Don’t they already have the bomb?  Why should this concern us?  Because unlike North Korea’s open and notorious plutonium reactors, we may never be able to verify that North Korean has stopped enriching uranium.

North Korea, which has ample supplies of natural uranium, would be able to conduct an enrichment programme in underground or undisclosed facilities and away from the prying eyes of U.S. spy satellites.

The North’s plutonium programme uses an aging reactor and is centered at its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant, which has been watched by U.S. aerial reconnaissance for years.

This is why Roh Moo Hyun’s plan to give the North Koreans an unlimited supply of free electricity was potentially so dangerous.  North Korea could have diverted the power from civilian use to running hidden centrifuges.  And judging by the image on my masthead, North Korea isn’t exactly plush with electricity.

Update:   The AP’s Kwang Tae Kim has much, much more in an article picked up by the Washington Post.