North Korea now has enough plutonium to make 10 nuclear bombs, South Korea said Wednesday, a week after leader Kim Jong-Un said it was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The isolated communist state, which has carried out five nuclear tests and numerous missile launches, is thought to be planning a nuclear push in 2017 as it seeks to develop a weapons system capable of hitting the US mainland.
Analysts are divided over how close Pyongyang is to realising its full nuclear ambitions, but all agree it has made enormous strides since Kim took over as leader from his father Kim Jong-Il who died in December 2011.
Seoul’s defence ministry said the North is believed to have some 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium as of the end of 2016 — enough to make about 10 weapons — up from 40 kilogrammes eight years earlier.
The North also has a «considerable» ability to produce weapons based on highly-enriched uranium, it said in a two-yearly white paper, but did not estimate weapons-grade uranium stocks, citing impenetrable secrecy in the state’s uranium programme.
US think tank the Institute for Science and International Security estimated in June that the North’s total nuclear arsenal was more than 21 bombs, up from 10-16 weapons in 2014, based on estimates of plutonium and uranium.
The North has boosted plutonium supplies by reactivating its once-mothballed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, the defence ministry said.
North Korea deactivated the Yongbyon reactor in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in 2013.
The type of plutonium suitable for a nuclear bomb typically needs to be extracted from spent nuclear reactor fuel.
Kim Jong-Un said in a New Year’s speech that Pyongyang was in the «final stages» of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile of the kind that could threaten US territory.
The address drew a swift response from US president-elect Donald Trump, who took to Twitter vowing to halt Pyongyang in its tracks.

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Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and the son of the Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-Hee, would be quizzed as a «suspect» in connection to bribery, prosecutors said.
«We have decided to question Lee tomorrow morning… as a suspect,» Lee Kyu-Chul, spokesman for the team of special prosecutors investigating the scandal, told reporters.
The affair centres on Park’s secret confidante Choi Soon-Sil, who is accused of using her ties to Park to coerce top firms into «donating» tens of millions of dollars to two non-profit foundations which Choi then used as her personal ATMs.
Samsung was the biggest contributor to the foundations. It is also accused of separately giving millions of euros to Choi to bankroll her daughter’s equestrian training in Germany in a bid to curry favour.
Prosecutors have for months questioned Lee and other senior Samsung officials. The officials reportedly argued that although they were coerced to offer money, they sought no favours in return and thus the payments were not a bribe.
Spokesman Lee said prosecutors «left open the possibility» of formally arresting the Samsung scion later.
Prosecutors are investigating whether Samsung bribed Choi in order to win state approval for a controversial merger which it sought in 2015.
The merger of two Samsung group units — Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T — was seen as a crucial step towards ensuring a smooth third-generation power transfer to Lee Jae-Yong.
It was criticised by many, who said it wilfully undervalued Samsung C&T’s stocks. But the National Pension Service (NPS) — a major Samsung shareholder — voted in favour of the deal and it eventually went through.
Prosecutors have raided multiple Samsung offices as well as the NPS in connection with the scandal. The fund — the world’s third largest pension fund — is overseen by the welfare ministry.
A former welfare minister was arrested last month for allegedly pressuring NPS officials to vote in favour of the Samsung deal.
Park, who stands accused of colluding with Choi to extract money from the firms, was impeached by parliament last month but denies any criminal wrongdoing.
The Constitutional Court is currently reviewing the validity of her impeachment — a process that may take up to six months. If the court approves the impeachment, a presidential election will be held in 60 days.
Choi, daughter of a shady religious figure who was close to Park for decades until his death in 1994, is on trial for charges including coercion and abuse of power.
The latest scandal shed light on unhealthy ties between the government and the powerful family-controlled conglomerates that have powered the country’s economy for decades.
There have been frequent scandals in which top managers at the conglomerates, known as chaebol, bribed officials to curry favour.
The founding families of the conglomerates have also become the targets of growing public mistrust. They are accused of running their global businesses with minimum scrutiny by regulators and investors.
The Samsung group — the South’s largest business empire — has a vast array of businesses including its flagship Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of smartphones.
The group’s founding Lee family has stepped up efforts to accelerate the power transfer to Lee Jae-Yong after his father suffered a heart attack in 2014 that left him bedridden.

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PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea has been getting some pretty high praise lately from the stoner world.
Marijuana news outlets including High Times, Merry Jane and Green Rush — along with British tabloids, which always love a good yarn — are hailing the North as a pothead paradise and maybe even the next Amsterdam of pot tourism. They’ve reported North Korean marijuana to be legal, abundant and mind-blowingly cheap, sold openly to Chinese and Russian tourists at a major market on the North’s border for about $3 a pound.
But seriously, North Korea? Baked?
The claim that marijuana is legal in North Korea is not true: The North Korean penal code lists it as a controlled substance in the same category as cocaine and heroin. And the person who would likely help any American charged with a crime in North Korea emphatically rejects the idea that the ban is not enforced.
“There should be no doubt that drugs, including marijuana, are illegal here,” said Torkel Stiernlof, the Swedish ambassador. The United States has no diplomatic relations with the North, so Sweden’s embassy acts as a middleman when U. S. citizens run afoul of North Korean laws.
“One can’t buy it legally and it would be a criminal offense to smoke it,” Stiernlof said. He said that if a foreigner caught violating drug laws in North Korea happened to be an American citizen, he or she could “expect no leniency whatsoever.”
Americans have been sentenced to years in North Korean prisons for such seemingly minor offenses as stealing a political banner and leaving a Bible in a public place.
Even so, the claim that North Korea is a haven for marijuana smokers has cycled through the internet in various incarnations with great success over the past few years.
Radio Free Asia, a U. S.-government-funded news service, lit up the latest round of stoner glee late last month with a story that Chinese and Russian tourists are stocking up on North Korean pot by the kilo in Rason, a special economic zone on the country’s northernmost frontier that has a large, bazaar-style marketplace. The same market was the setting for one of the earliest blogs on the topic, a first-person account of getting high in the North from 2013.
Categorically confirming or denying such claims is difficult because foreigners’ access to the market is restricted. But where there’s smoke, there usually is at least a little fire.
Troy Collings, a frequent traveler to North Korea and managing director of Young Pioneer Tours, offered a more mundane explanation: It’s just hemp.
Ditchweed. Nebraska no-high.
“I’ve seen and even purchased hemp, but it doesn’t contain any THC and is just sold as a cheap substitute for tobacco,” he told the AP in an email. “It grows wild in the mountainous regions of the North and people pick it, dry it and sell it in the markets, but it doesn’t get you high no matter how much you smoke.”
Hemp is grown in North Korea with official sanction. It’s used to make consumer goods including towels, cooking oil and noodles, as well as and military uniforms and belts. It’s also used as rabbit fodder. The rabbits are grown for food.
But industrial hemp is generally so low in THC, the active ingredient found in its cannabinoid cousins, sativa and indica, that it’s useless for medicinal or recreational purposes. It’s even cultivated in a different manner, focusing on male plants that do not produce buds. It’s the buds of female plants that recreational users are most after.
The Pyongyang Hemp Processing Factory actively markets hemp products as “environmentally friendly” and “perfect for the 21st century.” An official at the plant told The Associated Press that while several varieties of hemp grow in North Korea , all are very low in THC.
“No one smokes this in our country,” she said, requesting she not be named because of the sensitive nature of talking to the American media. “It’s only used for making things.”
North Korea grows something else that might be confused with marijuana: a mix of brown and greenish leafy tobacco that is used in pipes and sold openly in Pyongyang and elsewhere.
Smoking a lot of that could certainly give someone a buzz — and probably a bad headache. But from the nicotine.
Nevertheless, Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, another agency that specializes in bringing foreign tourists to the North, said the idea marijuana is legal in North Korea has become so widespread that it’s not uncommon for prospective tourists to ask what to expect.
“We apologize, but have to inform those enquiring about this that weed is not legal. They are not going to be able to get any there,” he said.
“The idea that the country is full of stoners blissfully getting high in a legal-weed paradise is not an accurate one,” he added. “Not having seen or done something doesn’t mean it is never seen or done, of course. But I have never seen this.”
Copyright © 2017 The Washington Times, LLC.
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