National News Reports claim N. Korea repairing reactor after removing seals

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Undaunted by strong U.S. warnings, North Korea is taking concrete steps to produce weapons-grade plutonium by starting to repair mothballed nuclear facilities, reports said Dec. 24 in Seoul.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that North Korean technicians were already working to repair one of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities.

"After removing the seals and disabling monitoring cameras at the 5-megawatt reactor, North Korean technicians are believed to be doing repair work at the reactor," a government source was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said that North Korea removed the last U.N. monitoring equipment from its frozen nuclear facilities Dec. 24.

North Korea has 8,000 fuel rods, which could be reprocessed to produce 25 kg to 30 kg of plutonium in three to four months, enough to make at least three nuclear bombs.

The latest move means Pyongyang has removed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) surveillance equipment from all the facilities inside the Yongbyon nuclear complex since Dec. 22.

The complex has a storage house that has many unused nuclear fuel rods that were produced before the facilities were sealed under the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States.

The IAEA, which monitors the North's nuclear program, has strongly demanded Pyongyang place its nuclear facilities back under U.N. surveillance.

North Korea has also removed seals from the 5-megawatt reactor, spent fuel rods in a cooling pond and a radioactive reprocessing laboratory at the complex, which lies some 90 km north of Pyongyang.

In other related developments, North Korean Defense Minister Kim Il Chol urged all soldiers and civilians Dec. 24 to turn themselves into "human bombs" in their fight against the United States amid the rising nuclear crisis.

北朝鮮が封印撤去、原子炉修理開始

米国の再三の警告にもかかわらず、北朝鮮は12月24日、寧辺の使用済み核燃料再処理施設に設置されていたすべての封印を撤去した。また、減速炉の修理作業も開始。これにより、北朝鮮のプルトニウム抽出と核兵器製造が現実味を帯びてきた。

Shukan ST: Jan. 3, 2003

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