North Korea Says it Has Restarted its Nuclear Facilities, Threatens US

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea Tuesday announced that it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and was ready to use nuclear weapons "any time" against the United States.

The announcement came less than a day after North Korea said it was preparing to launch a long-range rocket and will heighten fears that Kim Jong Un wants to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the foundation of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party on Oct. 10 with a literal bang.

All of the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, including the uranium enrichment plant and 5 megawatt reactor, were now in "normal operation," the unnamed director of North Korea's Atomic Energy Institute said, according to a report published Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korean scientists had been "steadily improving the levels of nuclear weapons with various missions in quality and quantity as required by the prevailing situation," the report said, adding that North Korea is ready to face American hostility with "nuclear weapons any time."

While Kim's regime is known for its bellicose rhetoric, Tuesday's claims are consistent with American analysts' interpretation of recent satellite imagery.

Analysts William Mugford and Jack Liu, writing last week on 38 North, a respected Web site devoted to North Korea, said that recent commercial satellite imagery indicated new activity was underway at the 5MW reactor and at a radiochemical laboratory complex at Yongbyon. Both are key to the production of plutonium for building nuclear weapons.

"While international attention has recently been focused on North Korea's Sohae satellite launching station and the possibility of a fourth long-range rocket test . . . developments at Yongbyon are cause for concern and should be monitored closely by the international community to determine their purpose," they wrote. Yongbyon is thought to be the source of the plutonium used in North Korea's nuclear tests as well as a uranium enrichment facility.

The Yongbyon reactor was shut down in 2007 in a deal brokered through "six party" talks involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas. However, after it conducted its third nuclear test in February 2013, North Korea threatened to restart the reactor. In Tuesday's report, North Korea said it had indeed re-started its main nuclear facility at that time.

On Monday, North Korea said it was preparing to launch a long-range rocket for space research, a provocative move that would be seen by the outside world as a part of its efforts to test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

The National Aerospace Development Administration said it was "pushing forward in the final phase the development of a new earth observation satellite for weather forecast."

"The world will clearly see a series of satellites of [North] Korea soaring into the sky at the times and locations determined by the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea," KCNA quoted the director of the agency as saying.

North Korea has previously launched "rockets" as part of its ostensible space program, at the end of 2012 it said it had put a satellite into orbit, and says it is not contravening any international missile bans by doing so.

"Space development for peaceful purposes is a sovereign state's legitimate right recognized by international law and the party and the people of [North Korea] are fully determined to exercise this right no matter what others may say about it," the report said.

But the tests are widely viewed as part of a missile testing program and would spark new tensions on the peninsula just weeks after North Korea threatened military action against the South.

That standoff was resolved with a deal in which the North promised not to stage any more provocations, and the South warned it would restart anti-North propaganda broadcasts in the event of an "abnormal" provocation.

South Korean government officials have declined to say whether a missile launch would count as "abnormal," suggesting it would depend on which way the rocket was heading.

In a report to the National Assembly last week, South Korea's defense ministry said that satellite imagery showed North Korea had completed building a 67-meter-tall tower at its Sohae rocket launch facility in Dongchang-ri, on the west coast not far from the border with the South. A tower of that size could be used to launch long-range missiles twice the size of the 30-meter Unha-3 that was launched into orbit in December 2012, the South's Yonhap News Agency reported.

In Washington, spokesman John Kirby said the State Department was aware of North Korea's statements and said any launch using ballistic missile technology would be "a clear violation" of international resolutions.

"There are multiple UN Security Council resolutions that require North Korea to suspend all activities related to their ballistic missile program and reestablish a moratorium on missile launches, stop conducting any launches using ballistic missile technology, and abandon its ballistic missile program in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner," he said in his daily press briefing.