RUSI Newsbrief, 15 Jan 2014 By Joshua PollackCommercial space images published over the process 2013 have revealed considerable activity at North Korea’s nuclear complex at Yongbyon. a brand new, ‘experimental’ light-water reactor project seems to be complete externally, and the previously disabled gas-cooled, graphite moderated reactor – the source of North Korea’s plutonium – appears to have recommenced operations in late August or early September. The roof of the recent gas-centrifuge uranium-enrichment facility shown to researchers from Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation in November 2010 has doubled in area.

These changes suggest a growing distance between North Korea’s formal commitment to denuclearisation under the discontinued Six-Party Talks (with South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the usa) and the entrenched reality of its nuclear programmes. They correspond to Pyongyang’s declaration in April 2013 that it’s going to ‘adjust’, ‘alter the uses’ of, and ‘restart’ the facilities at Yongbyon. In step with the North Korean authorities, these moves support a ‘new strategic line’ of simultaneously developing both nuclear weapons and the North Korean economy.

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