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North Korea Claims to Have “Nuclear Deterrent”; South Korea Dismisses Statement as Propaganda
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon yesterday told the U.N. General Assembly that Pyongyang was forced to develop a nuclear deterrent because the United States was planning to “eliminate” the communist country by making it “a target of pre-emptive nuclear strikes” (see GSN, Sept. 24). “Our deterrent is, in all its intents and purposes, the self-defensive means to cope with the ever increasing U.S. nuclear threats and further, prevent a nuclear war in northeast Asia,” he said in a news conference after the speech Choe declined to discuss details of the deterrent, but said, “We have already made clear that we have already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms.” When asked if the fuel had been turned into weapons, not just weapon-grade material, Choe said, “We declared that we weaponized this.” South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck in April said it was believed that the 8,000 fuel rods could yield enough plutonium for up to eight nuclear bombs, according to AP. A State Department official in Washington responded to Choe’s statements by noting that Secretary of State Colin Powell has said repeatedly that the United States has no intention to attack North Korea. The Bush administration has long believed that North Korea has at least one or two nuclear weapons, he added While North Korea would still consider dismantling its nuclear program, according to Choe, the “ever-intensifying U.S. hostile policy and the clandestine nuclear-related experiments recently revealed in South Korea are constituting big stumbling blocks” for North Korea’s participation in multilateral talks (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 28). South Korean officials today dismissed as propaganda Choe’s claims regarding the spent fuel rods, Agence France-Presse reported. “The chances are high for his remarks to be part of a highly calculated propaganda offensive,” a South Korean official was quoted by YTN cable news television as saying. “But we are trying to verify what he really meant.” “North Korea has been insisting on a nuclear deterrent against what it claims to be a hostile US policy toward its regime. The comment this time is nothing new from its previous stance that it will possess a nuclear deterrent,” another official told the Yonhap News Agency. “It is hard to believe the North has finished reprocessing all the fuel rods,” under its technological and time constraints, he added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 28).
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