New satellite images show renewed activity at a North Korean nuclear facility, suggesting Kim Jong Un’s regime is preparing or has already started reprocessing plutonium for nuclear weapons, experts say.
The commercial satellite photos show steam or smoke rising from both a small building at the Yongbyon Radiochemistry Laboratory and from an adjacent thermal plant. The lab is used to reprocess spent fuel rods to extract plutonium for nuclear bombs.
The photos, released by Maxar Technologies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, were posted on the think tank’s website, Beyond Parallel.
Previous satellite imagery had shown other signs of activity at the thermal power plant in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, cited signs of activity at the Yongbyon facility and another site, calling the nuclear work a clear violation of U.N. sanctions.
The latest activity suggests North Korea is preparing or has launched a new effort for nuclear reprocessing, according to Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior national security official in the George W. Bush administration.
The move, along with two rounds of missile tests in recent weeks, represents a political maneuver by Kim aimed at challenging President Joe Biden’s administration and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Cha said.
“It is a series of escalations, I think it’s pretty calculated. They’re ratcheting up pressure as they had done to President (Donald) Trump and to President (Barack) Obama,” Cha said.
The moves are “nothing new with regard to North Korea, but this is happening fairly early on in the administration,” he said.
The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
After the Biden administration presented a united front with allies in Asia, including Japan and South Korea, and took a tough line in talks with China, “I think North Korea feels like it has to respond,” said Cha, who is also a professor of government at Georgetown University.
To further escalate, North Korea could fire off longer-range missiles, conduct a nuclear test or launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, possibly from a submarine, Cha and other experts say.
North Korea has not conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile test since late 2017. After a period of high tensions, the Trump administration pursued diplomacy with Pyongyang. Talks in Hanoi in 2019 between Trump and Kim ultimately collapsed with no agreement.
The U.N. Security Council held a closed door meeting on North Korea Tuesday but the discussions produced no immediate outcome. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Monday “we’re looking at additional actions that we might take here in New York.”
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The satellite photos follow a string of provocative moves and statements by North Korea in recent weeks.
As the U.S. and South Korea carried out computer-simulated joint military exercises, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korea’s leader, warned Washington on March 16 against “causing a stink.”
Days later, North Korea launched a pair of short-range cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea. Senior Biden administration officials at the time said the cruise missile tests represented the low end of the scale in terms of what the regime could do to raise tensions.
Then last week, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. resolutions. The North Korean leader’s sister on Friday called South Korean President Moon “a parrot raised by America.”
At his first press conference last week, Biden said that the U.S. would consult with its allies and respond if the regime chose “to escalate.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Biden had no plans to meet with Kim.
“I think his approach would be quite different, and that is not his intention,” Psaki said.
Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, director of intelligence for U.S. Indo-Pacific command, said earlier this month that recent North Korean nuclear activity could be designed to gain leverage with the U.S. to try to secure relief from punishing sanctions.
“We have our eye on this. And it is deeply concerning where North Korea wants to go,” Studeman said at a virtual event. If North Korea has started reprocessing, “then that could put us into a different level of tension with Korea going into 2021,” he said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
