Nth Korea ‘plotting to keep arsenal’
US intelligence officials say Pyongyang has secret production facilities
US intelligence officials, citing newly obtained evidence, have concluded that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and secret production facilities, according to US officials.
The evidence, collected in the wake of the June 12 summit in Singapore, points to preparations to deceive the US about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, the officials said.
The findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defence Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearise.
The assessment stands in stark contrast to US President Donald Trump’s exuberant comments following the summit, when he declared on Twitter that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea. At a recent rally, he also said he had “great success” with Pyongyang.
Intelligence officials and many North Korea experts have generally taken a more cautious view, noting that leader Kim Jong Un’s vague commitment to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula is a near-echo of earlier pledges from North Korean leaders over the past two decades, even as they accelerated efforts to build nuclear weapons in secret.
The new intelligence, described by four officials who have seen it or received briefings, is based on material gathered in the weeks since the summit.
Specifically, the DIA has concluded that North Korean officials are exploring ways to deceive Washington about the number of nuclear warheads, and missiles and the types and numbers of facilities they have, believing that the US is not aware of the full range of their activities. US intelligence agencies have for at least a year believed that the number of warheads is about 65. But North Korean officials are suggesting that they declare far fewer.
The lone weapons facility that has been acknowledged by North Korea is in Yongbyon. That site is estimated to have produced fissile material for as many as two dozen warheads. The North Koreans also have operated a secret underground uranium enrichment site known as Kangson, which was first reported in May. That site is believed by most officials to have
twice the enrichment capacity of Yongbyon. US intelligence agencies became aware of the nuclear facility in 2010. In recent years, the US, through imagery and computer hacking, has improved its intelligence collection in North Korea. Officials in Pyongyang are seeking to obfuscate the true number of their weapons facilities, and US intelligence officials believe that more than just one hidden site exists.
North Korea expert David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said the assessments come at a time when “there’s a worry that the Trump Administration may go soft, and accept a deal that focuses on Yongbyon and forgets about these other sites.”
While North Korea made a public show in June of demolishing the country’s main nuclear weapons test site, there has been little public evidence of efforts to dismantle scores of other sites linked to production of nuclear and chemical weapons and delivery systems. Even if North Korea’s promises were sincere, it could take years of work, accompanied by an unprecedented agreement to grant access to outside inspectors, before US officials could confidently say that the weapons threat has been neutralised.
“North Korea has made no new commitments to denuclearisation, and in fact has backed away from its previous commitments,” Abraham Denmark of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, told a House committee in late June. “North Korea remains free to manufacture more nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other [WMDs] — even though it has unilaterally frozen testing. There is no deadline for them to eliminate their illegal capabilities, or even freeze their continued production.”