New Photos Reveal North Korea’s Previously Undisclosed Nuclear Weapons Facility

North Korean authorities media published caller photos from wrong a never-before-seen uranium enrichment installation connected Friday. The photos amusement Kim Jong Un touring an concern works stuffed with rows of machines that nutrient the substance that makes atomic weapons possible. The images corroborate what analysts person agelong suspected: North Korea has astatine slightest 2 plants susceptible of producing highly enriched uranium.

North Korean authorities media published 5 photos of Kim touring a atomic installation astatine a tract called Kangson, which is westbound of the capitol successful Pyongyang. Kim is seen walking past rows of metallic centrifuges susceptible of producing weapons-grade uranium. The sojourn coincided with a speech connected Friday wherever Kim outlined economical plans and called for “exponential” atomic weapons accumulation to forestall the West from striking North Korea preemptively.

In July, the Federation of American Scientists estimated that North Korea had 50 nukes and capable worldly and infrastructure to physique 130 by the extremity of the decade. The revelation of this caller installation mightiness alteration that estimation. Ankit Panda, Stanton Senior Fellow successful the Nuclear Policy Program astatine the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told NK Pro that experts “may person to importantly revise galore of the estimates that are retired determination astatine the infinitesimal connected however overmuch weapons-useable fissile worldly [North Korea] amassed.”

[Click photos to enlarge.]

The astir good known of North Korea’s atomic sites is Yongbyon, the tract of the country’s archetypal atomic reactor and the location of its lone publically disclosed uranium enrichment facility. But experts similar Panda and others person agelong suspected the beingness of a second, older and secret, facility.

In 2018, Panda outlined the evidence for the beingness of this concealed facility. Construction began successful the aboriginal 2000s on the banks of the Taedong River. “It is where, for much than a decade—possibly arsenic agelong arsenic 15 years—North Korea has been enriching uranium for usage successful atomic weapons. It is older than the well-known enrichment tract operated by North Korea since astatine slightest 2010 astatine the aged Fuel Fabrication Plant astatine Yongbyon,” Panda wrote successful The Diplomat.

Analysis by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute compared the photos from North Korea with outer imagery taken implicit the past twelvemonth of the suspected tract astatine Kangson. Satellite photos showed Kangson undergoing immoderate benignant of enlargement task successful March and analysts were capable to match that enactment to the interiors published successful the caller photos.

The unfastened root quality enactment outlined successful NK Pro confirmed that the installation Kim toured is the 1 astatine Kangson, which had undergone caller construction. In his speech, Kim said North Korea needed adjacent much centrifuges and much atomic weapons.