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(LEAD) N. Korea appears to have restored plutonium-generating plant: officials
By Sam Kim
SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has apparently restored its facility used to produce weapons-grade plutonium at its main nuclear complex that had been mothballed under a six-nation accord, officials here said Monday.
"The reprocessing factory appears to have been restored to its earlier conditions," a senior defense official said, citing satellite photos that also showed a continuous stream of workers in and out of the site in Yongbyon, 90km north of Pyongyang.
"Activities involving people and vehicles have been consistent for months," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea has started to reprocess spent fuel rods."
"Evidence points to the North having put Yongbyon back to work," another official said, citing electricity has been detected being supplied to the complex on and off over the past few months.
Fuel rods used inside a nuclear reactor are reprocessed to produce weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council in September that its reprocessing activity is "in its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized."
Both officials declined to be identified because they were speaking on intelligence matters. They also declined to speak on speculation that the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor and the fuel fabrication plant may also have been tampered with.
South Korea operates high-altitude vehicles capable of capturing electronic and communications signals emitted from the North by flying near the boundary between the two divided countries.
Under a landmark agreement with the U.S., South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in 2007, North Korea allowed the three main facilities in Yongbyon to undergo a series of disablement steps.
According to Siegfried Hecker, a U.S. expert who had visited the complex, most of the disablement actions had been carried out until the North expelled outside monitors in April this year, when it launched a long-range rocket and drew worldwide condemnation.
Less than a month later, the communist country conducted its second nuclear test, drawing U.N. sanctions harsher than those imposed after the 2006 explosion.
North Korea has since taken conciliatory gestures toward the outside world, offering to return to multinational talks and sending a ranking official to the U.S.
On Monday, the North said the U.S. holds the key to reviving the six-nation talks designed to provide diplomatic and economic benefits for complete and verifiable denuclearization.
"It will go its own way" if the U.S. does not first engage in direct talks with the North, Pyongyang's official media quoted an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
The six-nation talks have been stalled since late last year when Washington and Pyongyang descended into a dispute over methods to verify past nuclear activities in the North.
North Korea is believed to have manufactured plutonium enough to create at least six nuclear bombs. It has 8,000 spent fuel rods from which at least two can be built.
North Korea says it is also working on an uranium enrichment program -- a second track to developing nuclear weapons -- a claim which the U.S. and South Korea do not dispute.
North Korea restored its reprocessing equipment within two to three weeks in 2008 when the U.S. administration under President George W. Bush delayed removing the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, according to Hecker.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said last month that North Korea has yet to show signs that it is willing to roll back its nuclear program, calling its motive for dialogue "unclear."
South and North Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
samkim@yna.co.kr
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