North Korea reveals uranium site as Kim Jong Un demands more nuclear weapons

SEOUL — North Korea on Friday shared photos of a secretive facility used to produce weapons-grade uranium as leader Kim Jong Un called on his country to “exponentially increase” its nuclear weapons.

Images shared by the state-run Korean Central News Agency showed Kim surrounded by long rows of centrifuges during a visit to the uranium-enrichment facility. The agency did not disclose the date or location of the site.

During the visit, the news agency said, Kim spoke of the need to “exponentially increase the number of self-defense nuclear weapons,” as well as the importance of increasing the country’s number of centrifuges, the machines used to make enriched uranium. He said a modern centrifuge type has reached the final stage of planning and will strengthen North Korea’s production of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry condemned Pyongyang for its statements on further developing its nuclear capacity and said such development constitutes a clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“North Korea must realize that we and the international community will never condone North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” the ministry said in a statement Friday. “Any nuclear threat or provocation by North Korea will be met with an overwhelming and strong response from our government and military, based on the solid extended deterrence of the South Korea-U. S. alliance.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that it detected multiple short-range ballistic missiles fired from the North toward the sea, according to The Associated Press, days after Kim said he would increase efforts to ready his nuclear force for combat with the United States and its allies.

The images of the facility represent the North’s first disclosure of a nuclear facility since it showed a uranium enrichment site in Yongbyon to American scholars led by Stanford University nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker in 2010, the AP reported. It is unclear whether the facility shown in the images is Yongbyon.

In 2018, Hecker and other Stanford academics said North Korea had enough highly enriched uranium for 23 to 30 nuclear devices, according to the AP. Kim has repeatedly called for increasing the nuclear weapons arsenal since then.

A July estimate published by researchers from the Federation of American Scientists said that North Korea may have produced enough material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads and may have assembled about 50.

“These are the first public images we’ve had of the inside of a DPRK enrichment facility, so they are pretty extraordinary in that sense,” Darya Dolzikova​​​​, a research fellow with the London-based Royal United Services Institute’s proliferation and nuclear policy program, said in an email Friday.

She added that the release of the photos may “help address at least some of the blind spots in our understanding,” given the lack of recent open-source information about North Korea’s enrichment program.

Edward Howell, a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford and Korea Foundation Fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House, noted the timing of Pyongyang’s actions this week.

“North Korea has historically engaged in provocations during U.S. presidential election years, so the recent missile launches should not come as a surprise,” he wrote in an email.

“Kim Jong Un’s visit to the uranium enrichment facility, two months prior to the election, suggests not only that Pyongyang’s indigenous ability to produce highly-enriched uranium is becoming increasingly advanced, but crucially, that North Korea has no intention to denuclearize, nor does it wish to offer any concessions on its nuclear and missile programs in the future.”

North Korea withdrew from a nuclear weapons treaty in 2003 and carried out its first nuclear test three years later. Since then it has conducted five more: The most recent and most powerful took place in 2017.

The U.N. Security Council and the United States have imposed rounds of sanctions against North Korea.

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Bisset reported from London.