North Korea Has Two Ways to Make Bomb

From yesterday's NYT, a bit more context on the DPRK's nuclear ambitions.

SEOUL — North Korea’s announcement on Friday that its experiment in enriching uranium is at “completion stage” marks the strongest signal yet from Pyongyang that it is racing to develop a second method of making nuclear bombs.

North Korea also said it was building additional nuclear bombs with plutonium it had recently gleaned from its reactor in Yongbyon. It said it had completed reprocessing the latest batch of spent fuel unloaded from the reactor, repeating the procedure believed to have given the North enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.

For years, officials in Washington and elsewhere have debated whether North Korea was pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program. After years of denial, North Korea announced in April that it intended to enrich uranium.

In June, it said its enrichment program was in an “experimental stage.”

Full story here.

Pyongyang's "Hotel of Doom" - Now With Less Gloom!

Here's an odd piece from Reuters:

SEOUL (Reuters) - A towering North Korean hotel which Esquire magazine once dubbed "the worst building in the history of mankind" has come back to life with a facade of shiny glass windows affixed to one side of the concrete monolith.

But few expect the North will ever finish construction of its 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, started in 1987 and halted for 16 years because it could have bankrupted the destitute state.

"The hotel doesn't look as shoddy as it once did, probably because of the reflective glass," said a member of a civic group in South Korea that recently returned from a visit to the North.

The 330-meter (1,083 ft) tall hotel dominating the Pyongyang skyline consists of three wings rising at 75 degree angles capped by several floors arranged in rings supposed to hold five revolving restaurants and an observation deck.

(Photo: Reuters)

Full story here.

DPRK In Final Stage of Enrichment?

From CNN:

(CNN) — North Korea’s state-run news agency said Thursday that the country has sent a letter to the United Nations announcing that “reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized.”

North Korea can also now enter the final stage of uranium enrichment, it said in the letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council, according to state-run KCNA.

Despite stating in the letter that they “totally reject” a Security Council resolution in June that demanded that the country no longer pursue nuclear weapons, the North Koreans said they are “prepared for both dialogue and sanctions,” KCNA reported.

The government also warned, “If some permanent members of the UNSC wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue,” according to KCNA.

The news comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s latest attempt to restart stalled nuclear negotiations with the reclusive state. In the coming days, U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth and the director of the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, Sung Kim, will meet with officials representing China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — all countries partnering with the United States in talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program.

Hmmm.

Lee and Ling Speak Out

I'm playing catch-up after some vacation time, but Lee and Ling wrote this piece in the LATimes Tuesday detailing their capture and imprisonment.

They concede they entered North Korea briefly, but, sure enough, they were snatched on the Chinese side of the border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

...

In researching the story, we sought help from several activists and missionaries who operate in the region. Our main contact was the Seoul-based Rev. Chun Ki-won, a well-known figure in the world of North Korean defectors. Chun and his network have helped smuggle hundreds of North
Koreans out of China and into countries -- including the U.S. -- where they can start new lives. He introduced us to our guide and gave us a cellphone to use in China, telephone numbers to reach his associates and specific instructions on how to contact them. We carefully followed his directions so as to not endanger anyone in this underground world.

Because these defectors live in fear of being repatriated to North Korea, we took extreme caution to ensure that the people we interviewed and their locations were not identifiable. We met with defectors away from their actual places of work or residence. We avoided filming the faces of defectors so as not to reveal their identities. The exception was one woman who allowed us to film her profile.

Most of the North Koreans we spoke with said they were fleeing poverty and food shortages. One girl in her early 20s said she had been told she could find work in the computer industry in China. After being smuggled across the Tumen River, she found herself working with computers, but not in the way she had expected. She became one of a growing number of North Korean women who are being used as Internet sex workers, undressing for online clients on streaming video. Some defectors appeared more nervous about being interviewed than others. But they all agreed that their lives in China, while stark, were better than what they had left behind in North Korea.

Full story here.