North Korea has been in the news recently with respect to the theft of electronic records from the Sony studios in Los Angeles, California. They have also been making the usual threats to annihilate the U.S. with a rain of nuclear warheads. It is though that they may have between ten and sixteen nuclear bombs made of plutonium and/or weapons grade uranium but it is doubted that they have the missile technology necessary to reach the continental U.S. Now there is a new report on the North Korean nuclear weapons programs.
Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and David Albright, a nuclear nonproliferation expert are embarking on a fifteen month study involving North Korean nuclear weapons. The study is taking place at the Washington, D.C. Institute for Science and International Security. It is a project of the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Combining satellite imagery, media coverage of North Korea and their extensive knowledge of nuclear proliferation, Wit and Albright created three different scenarios about possible North Korean progress during the years from 2009 to 2014 which followed the collapse, in 2008, of international six-party talks dealing with the N.K nuclear weapons programs. The report concludes that these five years were very productive for the N.K. nuclear weapons program. Contrary to popular opinion, the Institute concluded that N.K. already has plutonium warheads that are small enough to install on medium-range and intercontinental-range missiles.
The first scenario has N.K. doubling its stockpile of nuclear warhead to about twenty with yields of about ten kilotons each by 2020. These plutonium warheads could be miniaturize enough to be mounted on intermediate-range and shorter-range ballistic missiles. The second and most likely scenario would see N.K. continue on its current course and producing fifty nuclear warheads by 2020. The third and worst case scenario finds N.K. growing its stockpile of nuclear bombs to over one hundred with yields between twenty and fifty kilotons by 2020. This scenario includes N.K. making major advances in designing tactical weapons that could be deployed on battlefields.
Even though there are a variety of international sanctions against the spread of nuclear weapons technology, N.K. can still obtain nuclear technology in various ways including purchasing through Chinese front companies and smuggling across the Chinese-North Korean border. The U.S. is concerned that some of the technology currently being supplied to China for Chinese nuclear projects may wind up in N.K. The U.S. Congress is considering implementing harsher sanctions against foreign companies working with N.K.
N.K. already has missiles that can reach South Korea and Japan. In the future, they may produce a few Taepodong space launch vehicles that could be repurposed missiles for attacking the U.S. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that "The United States remains committed to the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and will continue — in close consultation with our allies — to bring pressure to bear on North Korea in support of that goal." The U.S. and other major powers are trying to find a way to bring N.K. back to the negotiating table. It is understood that the more nuclear weapons that N.K. has, the more difficult it will be to convince them to surrender them.
