North Korea reportedly has five nuclear bombs:
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999 Agence France-Press
TOKYO (April 16, 1999 1:03 a.m. EDT nandotimes.com) - North Korea has at least five nuclear weapons developed with help from Russia and Pakistan, according to a defector.
"(North Korea) has complete capability of developing nuclear bombs, missiles and satellites," Kim Duk-Hong, aide to the highest-ranking North Korean defector Hwang Jang-Yop, said in an interview published here Friday.
Hwang, who was a Workers' Party Secretary in the Stalinist state, defected to South Korea in 1997 with his secretary Kim.
Kim said Hwang was told in 1996 by Workers' Party Secretary in charge of military supply, Jong Pyong-Ho, that North Korea had obtained uranium from Pakistan to develop nuclear bombs.
"I heard that (Jong) also said the country has already possessed five nuclear bombs based on plutonium," Kim told the Japanese right-wing daily Sankei Shimbun.
North Korea started developing nuclear bombs in the 1960s with technical assistance from Russian scientists, Kim was quoted as saying.
"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, various kinds of things were shipped from Russia," he said.
"We can naturally think plutonium was one of them," he said. "A number of Russian technicians had been staying at apartments of the defense agency."
Kim said North Korea's underground nuclear facilities were built so deep that US and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would not detect their existence.
"I heard that the nuclear development facilities were constructed several tens of meters (yards) underground, so they are not be detected by inspections," he said.
The IAEA is working to freeze Pyongyang's suspect nuclear programme in return for the safe light-water plants under a 1995 agreement between Pyongyang and Washington.
North Korea is under pressure to accept full inspections of an underground site suspected to be used for nuclear arms development. |
