Kim Man-bok, head of the National Intelligence Service, reported to a closed-door National Assembly session that North Korea has a highly-enriched uranium (HEU) nuclear program:

South Korea’s intelligence agency said Tuesday it believes North Korea is running a clandestine uranium-enriching program, an allegation that has been surfacing as a key source of contention on a nuclear disarmament deal reached last week.

This comes four years and four months after James Kelley confronted Kang Seok-Ju about it in Pyongyang, and three years after Pakistani President Musharraf pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan for giving North Korea uranium enrichment technology and equipment.

In a related article, high ranking defector Hwang Jang-yop, the former secretary of the North Korean Workers Party, said of the closure of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor:

“In fact, I heard the plutonium (extracted) with a graphite reactor is unusable directly from the secretary of munitions manufacture. Before that, they had frequently asked me to find a way as secretary of international affairs to import more plutonium, but then they said that it was no longer necessary. They said they found out how to make (nuclear weapons) with uranium 235. That was in 1996. Ten years have passed. They must possess more than enough to manufacture (nuclear weapons) there. They are denying it.”

Hwang is saying that North Korea had a viable method for enriching uranium in 1996. As far as I know, this coincides with time that AQ Khan began actively assisting North Korea’s HEU program, but I’m not sure it would have been operational that soon. Other possibilities are that Khan was involved before 1996, or that Hwang is just wrong.

On a positive note, it appears that the uranium issue – and CVID – will not in fact be forgotten by other Six-Party Talks members, and that the noose is still there.

Also see, Background on the DPRK nuclear program; GMR vs. LWR, which explains the differences between plutonium (Pu-239) and uranium (U-235).