North Korea: North Korea recently reprocessed a small number of its estimated 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and has also tested devices used to trigger atomic explosions, South Korea's intelligence agency said yesterday.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) statement to parliament on recent North Korean nuclear activity follows similar reports in US newspapers and comes as Seoul and its allies are trying to draw Pyongyang into talks.
The NIS reported to the National Assembly Intelligence Committee that Seoul "estimates North Korea has recently reprocessed a small number of the 8,000 fuel rods it was keeping at Yongbyon", a spokesman for the agency said.
China reacted by saying it opposed any nuclear weapons testing on the Korean peninsula.
"China is opposed to the testing of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. This stance has not changed," a Foreign Ministry official said.
The official did not say how China would officially respond to the report, which also said North Korea had already reprocessed some spent nuclear fuel rods. "It needs to be confirmed," he said.
Yongbyon, the base of North Korea's nuclear programme, is a city 75 km north of the capital, Pyongyang.
The 8,000 spent fuel rods were part of a plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme that was frozen under a 1994 nuclear agreement between North Korea and the United States. The pact unravelled earlier this year after US revelations of a covert North Korean scheme to enrich uranium for bomb-making.
The NIS told parliament that Seoul had also confirmed North Korea had, at least 70 times, tested devices that could be used to trigger nuclear explosions at Yongduk-dong, some 40 km north-west of Yongbyon.
China, an old ally of North Korea which is hosting South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun this week, said the intelligence report had yet to be confirmed, but that Beijing was against any testing of nuclear weapons in the region.
"China is opposed to the testing of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. This stance has not changed," a Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, said.
Earlier, a North Korean cabinet-level delegation which flew into Seoul yesterday for economic talks issued a dire warning.
"It is a grim reality that the black clouds of nuclear war are gathering on the Korean Peninsula minute by minute," the arrival statement released by the North Koreans said.
On July 1st, the New York Times reported that US intelligence officials believed North Korea was developing technology that could make nuclear warheads small enough to be carried by its missiles.
Officials who had seen the CIA reports told the newspaper that American satellites had identified an advanced nuclear-testing site. The New York Times identified the site as Youngdoktong.
Equipment at the site has been set up to test explosives that could set off compact nuclear explosions when detonated, the New York Times said.
The information had been shared with Japan, South Korea and other allies in recent weeks, the newspaper said. NIS chief Mr Ko Young-koo visited Washington last month.
Top South Korean officials, including the Foreign Minister, Mr Yoon Young-kwan, said yesterday that the explosives tests reported by the New York Times were not news and were widely known among Seoul and its allies. - (Reuters)