![]() ![]() But the yield has kept growing in the North’s last test, in late 2017, the yield had jumped to 250 kilotons - 16 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb - enough to level all the residential buildings in downtown Washington, D.C. Its first test that year had a yield of only 0.7 to 2 kilotons. North Korea has carried out six nuclear tests since 2006. And the North Koreans were showing off the accomplishment to a Western visitor. They “couldn’t quite believe” what they saw - 2,000 centrifuges in a modern enrichment facility. In 2010, North Korea invited Stanford University physics professor Siegfried Hecker and a colleague to view its now-completed uranium enrichment facility. The yield of North Korea’s nuclear tests has risen exponentially.Ĭlearly we were right to worry about those centrifuge materials and the North’s plans for its nuclear program. Watching the news in recent years from North Korea can seem like a slow and hard-to-follow drip of developments. North Korea today - what you need to know That spring - roughly nine months after my White House briefing - the North was openly back in the business of producing nuclear explosive material usable for weapons. By April 2003, the North Koreans were reprocessing spent fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium. Kelly’s mission - and the North Korean response - shut down any consideration of concessions to the North and triggered a series of North Korean moves that still reverberate today: the December 2002 ejection of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the January 2003 withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the North’s announcement, in February 2003, that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities. After some arguments among translators, it was apparent they had acknowledged their plan to enrich uranium. 3, and by all accounts they were shocked - and scrambled overnight to respond. Kelly was armed with talking points summarizing what I had said - without revealing how we knew. It was also enough to start that chain of events.įirst, the administration decided to send then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Jim Kelly to Pyongyang to confront the North Koreans. Centrifuges are used in the enrichment of uranium for peaceful and weapons purposes if true, the finding would mark a significant development - as clear a sign as the world had to that point that the North had secretly resumed its march toward a nuclear capability. My key point was that we had learned that North Korea had begun seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities. What I can say is that my briefing kept strictly within the bounds of what we knew with reasonable confidence and did not speculate beyond that. Many details of what I said the following morning remain classified. Bush wanted to make sure North Korea was honoring the deal before continuing. This was all part of the “ Agreed Framework” negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994. The Bush administration was considering whether to keep President Bill Clinton’s commitment to give Pyongyang much-needed fuel supplies and help in the building of peaceful nuclear reactors - in return for Pyongyang’s pledge to abandon its weapons-related work on plutonium. Bush and the national security team on the latest intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear posture. She asked whether, in my capacity as deputy director of Central Intelligence, I could come to the White House the next morning and brief President George W. The story begins with a phone call I received one afternoon in September 2002 from then-White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. More specifically, I wonder whether a briefing I gave the president of the United States led in strange ways to the heavily armed and isolated nuclear North Korea we confront today. ![]() There are times when I feel I might be responsible for starting a chain reaction that cascaded into a nightmare on the Korean peninsula. ![]()
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