North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the secret facility to produce weapons-grade uranium and called for greater efforts to “exponentially” increase the number of its nuclear weapons, according to state media on Friday (September 13). It is not clear whether the site is at the main Yongbyon nuclear complex, but it is North Korea’s first public disclosure of a uranium enrichment facility since it showed one at Yongbyon to visiting American scholars in 2010.
The latest development could likely be an attempt to apply further pressure on the United States and its allies, as images of the area published by North Korean media could provide outsiders with a source of information to estimate the amount of nuclear ingredients North Korea has produced so far.
During a visit to North Korea’s nuclear weapons institute and production base for weapons-grade nuclear materials, Kim repeatedly expressed his “great satisfaction with the wonderful technical strength of the nuclear energy field,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The KCNA news agency reported that Kim visited the control room of the uranium enrichment base and a construction site that would expand its capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Photographs in North Korean state media showed Kim receiving instructions from scientists as he walked along long rows of tall gray pipes, but there were no reports on the exact date of Kim’s visit to the facility or its location.
North Korea first showed the outside world a uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon in November 2010, when it allowed a delegation of Stanford University academics, led by nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker, to tour its centrifuges. North Korean officials reportedly told Hecker that there were already 2,000 centrifuges installed and operating at Yongbyon.
Satellite imagery in recent years has indicated that North Korea was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. Nuclear weapons can be built using either highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and North Korea has facilities to produce both at Yongbyon. It is unclear exactly how much weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium has been produced at Yongbyon and where North Korea is storing it.
Since 2022, North Korea has dramatically stepped up its weapons testing activities to expand and modernize its nuclear missile arsenal targeting the United States and South Korea. According to analysts, North Korea could conduct nuclear test explosions or long-range missile tests ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November with the intention of influencing the outcome and increasing its leverage in future relations with the Americans.
North Korea on Thursday test-fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles.
(With AP inputs)
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