South Korea says North has up to 60 nuclear bombs

A top South Korean official told politicians that North Korea is thought to have up to 60 nuclear weapons.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told parliament on Monday that North Korea had a nuclear arsenal of between 20 and 60 bombs.

Mr Cho said the information came from the intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s main spy agency, did not immediately comment.

The minister may have unintentionally revealed the information. His ministry said Mr Cho’s comments did not mean South Korea would accept North Korea as a nuclear state and that Seoul’s diplomatic efforts to rid the North of its nuclear programme would continue.

The assessment is not much different from various civilian estimates largely based on the amount of nuclear material the North is believed to have produced.

South Korean reports say the North is believed to have produced 50 kilograms of weaponised plutonium.

This would be enough for at least eight bombs.

Stanford University scholars, including nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker – who visited North Korea’s centrifuge facility at Nyongbyon in 2010 – wrote this year that Pyongyang is estimated to have a highly enriched uranium inventory of 250 to 500 kilograms, enough for 25 to 30 nuclear devices.

Many foreign experts say North Korea is probably operating more secret uraniumenrichment plants.

The North entered talks with the US and South Korea this year, saying it was willing to negotiate away its nuclear arsenal.

This diplomacy later stalled because of suspicions over how sincere North Korea was about disarmament.

But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to visit Pyongyang this month to set up a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.