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We have been surprised that the piece by Lars-Erik De Geer on possible nuclear tests by North Korea in 2010--now available online, albeit at a stiff $36 price tag-- has not gotten more airplay. On the other hand, perhaps that is a good thing given the completely speculative way his work has been exploited to suggest an Iranian link to the tests. Our analysis of the issue can be found here.
For the record, Dr. De Geer got back to us with this pointed commentary on the Rühle piece in Die Welt which got the ball rolling: “I think Rühle's text is very interesting but I cannot see anything that really supports it. I actually hinted at a possible Iran-NK connection via my footnote 67, but I kept it quite hidden as I have no hard evidence at all.”
We also have more information on Rühle's priors. In an article in Die Welt in February, he argued that contrary to skeptics, Israel’s air force could easily destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Technical capability hardly makes it rational. Over at Foreign Policy, our old friend Steve Walt makes an argument about Iran that we also have made about North Korea: talk of pre-emption strengthened, rather than weakened, the incentives to develop and maintain a deterrent.
This story has reminded us of several other nuclear tidbits. First, ever since Sigfried Hecker’s November 2010 trip that revealed the presence of an advanced HEU program, we have wondered about the upstream part of the industry. (his report can be found here, and is a must-read). Where were these centrifuges coming from? And what did they suggest about the extent of the program, including at other locations?
Back in October, Park Sun-yong of the Liberty Forward Party claimed that North Korea already had a new underground uranium enrichment facility at Yulgok-ri, Dongchang-goon, North Pyong-an province. She argued that North Korea would use Yongbyon as a showcase for IAEA inspections to extract whatever inducements were on offer, while keeping its nuclear program intact. On the still more sensational side, she claimed that North Korea had already completed the production of a new 500 km range missile capable of carrying a small warhead (she did not say that the North Koreans had miniaturized). The source of these revelations was a KPA Lieutenant Colonel who claims to have been a company commander in charge of the guard duty during the construction of the nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik declined to comment, saying the matter "is an intelligence concern."
We know, we know; sometimes a “no comment” is just a “no comment.” But why not just deny it? Moreover, the idea that there are other facilities is much more intuitively plausible. A major criticism of the 2008 approach of the Bush administration was that it was overly focused on Yongbyon. The administration’s strategy, led by the peripatetic Chris Hill, was that if progress could be made on disabling Yongbyon, then it could be extended to stocks of fissile material, the actual weapons, and other facilities and issues, most notably missiles. The criticism that it can’t is likely to resurface with the current freeze proposal.
Lastly, final preparations are now in train for the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul later in the month. Back in February, the North Koreans denounced the gathering in strong terms, although it is always hard to know how serious they are given the more-or-less constant level of invective; interesting research by Vito D’Orazio at Penn State makes this point with respect to military exercises.
President Obama is scheduled to visit the DMZ during the trip and will no doubt make comments on North Korea policy. That raises the security stakes. Kim Jong-un visited the DMZ last week.
As we discussed back in May, LMB actually invited the North Koreans to the nuclear summit. My colleague Marc Noland noted at the time that the idea was not as crazy as it sounded. But in line with Noland’s “greater fool” theory, the North turned down the offer in favor of embarrassing the LMB government with leaks from North-South talks.
The Korea shop at SAIS has a very useful collection of papers exploring the NSS process from every angle. North Korea will not be on the agenda. But the topic and high-level representation will no doubt provide the opportunity for five-party diplomacy on North Korea at the margins of the conference; all of the five—including China—are coming.
