North Korea just 5 years away from nuking US

MISSILE MADNESS: Experts suspect North is making fuel for uranium bombs

FOR 20 years, fears about North Korea's headlong pursuit of nuclear bombs have been deflected by admonishments not to overestimate an impoverished dictatorship prone to bragging and tantrums. 

Not any more.

After three nuclear tests of apparently increasing power and a long-range rocket launch that put it a big step closer to having a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead to American shores, many believe that in a matter of years -- as little as five, maybe, though the timeframe is debated -- Pyongyang will have a scary nuclear arsenal.

Though it's a view not embraced by everyone, one respected South Korean expert says North Korea could be working toward 80 to 100 nuclear-tipped missiles.

Bruce Klingner, a former American intelligence officer specialising in North Korea, provides a less dramatic but still bracing assessment: if the path is A to Z, with Z being nuclear missiles that can hit the United States mainland, North Korea is maybe at T.

Proof of the new seriousness with which Pyongyang's intentions are now seen can be found in the Obama administration's announcement in March that it will spend US$1 billion (RM3 billion) to add 14 interceptors to the US-based missile defence system. It said it was responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.

"Where in the past, there may have been some ambiguity about what North Korea was seeking to achieve, there is a clear recognition that they are pressing towards a nuclear capability with a potential longer-range delivery," Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for Asia from 2009 until earlier this year, said at a forum last week in Seoul.

"Such an approach represents a strategic, almost existential threat to the United States."

The sense of urgency is new. What hasn't changed is the fierce, seemingly paralysing debate about how to discourage North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. Some call for unconditional talks. Others say it's time for tougher, Iran-style sanctions and for China to cut off aid to its ally.

Pyongyang emerged in a new light after it put a satellite into orbit on the tip of a long-range rocket in December -- beating much richer Seoul to that goal. Then in February, it conducted a nuclear test that, while details remain unclear, appeared to be its most powerful yet. It followed those moves with a torrent of threats in March and last month in response to United Nations sanctions and huge US-South Korean military drills.

"It's quite understandable that people are spooked. The only mystery is why it's taken so long," Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation specialist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, wrote in a blog post in mid-last month.

Analysts now put the North's arsenal at four to eight plutonium bombs. They also suspect it is making fuel for uranium bombs, but they don't know how much.

The suspected bombs aren't thought to be small enough to put on long-range missiles, but some analysts believe Pyongyang may be able to arm shorter-range missiles with warheads.

   Pyongyang's weapons probably aren't meant to carry out nuclear threats, analysts say, but instead to protect against perceived outside hostility while extracting diplomatic and aid concessions. Pyongyang insists that it needs nuclear weapons to defend against a US attack. 

Washington insists it has no such intention. 

Here's how one prominent analyst sees the future of Pyongyang's atomic arsenal. North Korea's leaders have been closely studying their nuclear history and Pakistan, which helped Pyongyang's nascent nuclear programme and which built its own atomic arsenal outside international treaties, was probably an inspiration, said Hahm Chaibong, president of the conservative Asan Institute in Seoul.

With that model in mind, the goal then could be a "minimum operational nuclear capability" of 80 to 100 nuclear missiles, including some that could reach the United States, Hahm estimated.

The weapons would be hidden around the country to prevent detection, in caves, tunnels, amid conventional missile stockpiles, in dense population centres and on mobile launchers, Hahm said.
One hundred warheads in five years is probably alarmist, Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear expert at Georgetown University, wrote in an email, but "it would be naive to assume that Pyongyang will keep a small and primitive arsenal forever. Rather, it is likely that they will rapidly move to expand their arsenal and means of delivery."

Many analysts believe it has taken so long to come to terms with North Korea's intentions because of a long history of chronic underestimation.

This may stem from the North's poverty or from the images of goose-stepping soldiers and leadership-worshipping masses that can seem to foreigners to be frozen in the amber of Cold War stereotype.

"It's not a pretend nuclear-strike capability," said John Delury, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University. "We're past that point where you can just laugh it off."

Some of North Korea's recent threats were widely dismissed, including vows of nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul. But another announcement was more worrying: it promised to restart all nuclear fuel production, including a mothballed reactor that could eventually make a bomb's worth of plutonium annually. Estimates on how long it would take to restart plutonium facilities vary from three months to a year. AP

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