Foreign pundits recently predicted that North Korea will possess between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons by 2020. This may have been an exaggeration, but the assertions are not too far from the truth.
The news was nothing new or shocking. Any expert familiar with North Korea’s nuclear situation, and have been doing their math, could have figured this out.
Here’s why.
It is not difficult for the experts closely watching the 5 megawatt reactor in Yongbyon, which has been in and out of operation since 1987, to calculate that the reactor must have produced enough plutonium for five to 10 nuclear bombs. A professional estimation is also possible regarding North Korea’s production of highly-enriched uranium.
It was in 2010 that Dr. Seigfried Hecker, a renowned American nuclear expert, was invited to North Korea’s enrichment plant in Yongbyon. Based on what he witnessed, it was estimated that the enrichment facilities could produce enough HEU for up to two uranium bombs a year.
Moreover, many experts have reasons to believe that North Korea is likely to have commenced its enrichment operations well before 2010. They all point to the secret deal between North Korea and Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan over enrichment technology since the mid-1990s. Considering this, the history of North Korea’s enrichment activities may go well beyond a decade. It’s also hard to believe that what we are seeing is all of its enrichment facilities.
After assessing North Korea’s enrichment-related activities, one can easily piece together a prediction that the country is secretly expanding its enrichment facilities and that it is capable of producing annual amounts of highly enriched uranium that could help build four to six nuclear warheads. Just this simple calculation alone highlights that North Korea could indeed become a powerful nuclear weapon state with more than 50 nuclear weapons by 2020.
However, the real shock is South Korea’s insensible attitude toward Pyongyang’s growing nuclear armament. So far experts here have warned the government about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions on numerous occasions.
When the Roh Tae-woo administration gave up enrichment and reprocessing rights in 1991 as a part of its denuclearization declaration, pundits argued that the move would do nothing to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and that it would serve only to place unnecessary shackles on the South. When the 1994 Agreed Framework halted the operations of the Yongbyon reactor, they warned that this would not signal an end to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions but a possible harbinger for Pyongyang to switch to uranium bombs.
When North Korea dismantled the cooling tower of the Yongbyon reactor in 2008, experts once again spoke up to say this would reflect Pyongyang’s ambition toward the mass production of uranium bombs.
Unfortunately, the government took no heed from such warnings. Busy with political strife, politicians have never bothered to draw up an effective deterrence policy for keeping South Koreans safe. Even now, the South Korean Defense Ministry and policymakers speak only of the Korean Air and Missile Defense system and the Kill Chain, both of which have limits in technological and political feasibility.
Seoul seems to be pretty much deaf to advice that South Korea needs a new, more credible deterrence strategy based on a retaliation concept. This is in addition to the deployment of THAAD, which constitutes bottom-line defense efforts.
It also does not listen to the voices demanding a revision of the South Korea-U.S. alliance treaty by inserting the so-called “automatic intervention” article and nuclear umbrella. Still, policymakers seem to ignore warnings that the world will soon see North Korea’s deployment of nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, and possibly even boosted fission bombs and hydrogen bombs.
To this day, North Korea, armed with its asymmetrical weapons, has dominated inter-Korean relations by taking advantage of the split national sentiment in the South. Under such circumstances, once North Korea becomes a fully-fledged nuclear weapons power, South Korea will lose what little leverage it has against Pyongyang, thus neutralizing the nation’s North Korea policy.
A peaceful, democratic reunification also becomes elusive. Dialogue and inter-Korean exchange is necessary, but one would be delusional to believe those efforts alone could resolve the nuclear dilemmas. Now is the time to undertake the measures to firmly deter the North Korean nuclear threat and keep the public safe. This must be pursued separately from our efforts to engage Pyongyang in dialogue.
By Kim Tae-woo
Kim Tae-woo is an invited professor at Konyang University and former president of the Korea Institute for National Unification. ― Ed.
