Nov 3, 6:27 PM (ET)

By JAE-SOON CHANG



SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea claimed Tuesday that it has successfully weaponized more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.

The announcement underlined Pyongyang's impatience over securing one-on-one talks with Washington, as well as the difficulties in dealing with a regime that resorts to threats and provocations to get what it wants.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said North Korea had finished reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which experts say would provide enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least one more nuclear bomb.

The claim may not mean much, since North Korea is believed to already have enough weaponized plutonium for half a dozen nuclear weapons. But the timing - a day after Pyongyang warned it would beef up its nuclear arsenal if the U.S. refused to agree on bilateral talks - shows the communist regime is flexing its atomic might to push Washington to act, analysts said.

"North Korea is trying to show off its nuclear might as a way to pressure the United States to agree to the talks," said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

U.S. State Deparment spokesman Ian Kelly accused the Pyongyang government of violating its past commitments at international disarmament talks.

"Reprocessing plutonium is contrary to North Korea's own commitments" at those negotiations and violates United Nations resolutions, Kelly told reporters in Washington. He said the Obama administration was focused on trying to restart stalled six-nation nuclear talks.

North Korea has long sought direct nuclear negotiations with the U.S., believing that it is the easiest, fastest and surefire way of ensuring the survival of the totalitarian regime and win economic concessions to rebuild its moribund economy.

On Monday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry warned that "if the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the (North), it will go its own way," an apparent threat to bolster its nuclear arsenal.

Pyongyang has claimed it needs atomic weapons to defend itself against the U.S., which fought against the North during the Korean War in the 1950s and has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea to protect the ally.

The U.S. says it has no intention of attacking the North.

But the North said Tuesday that it remains "compelled to take measures to bolster its deterrent for self-defense to cope with the increasing nuclear threat and military provocations of the hostile forces."

Washington has said it is willing to meet one-on-one with the North if the talks lead to the resumption of the six-nation negotiations involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the U.S.

However, discussions between a North Korean envoy and a U.S. official last week did not yield an agreement to hold talks, both sides said.

Kelly told reporters Monday that Sung Kim, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, recently had useful discussions with Ri Gun, North Korea's No. 2 official for nuclear talks. He said the U.S. is still considering North Korea's offer.

North Korea agreed in 2007 to disable its main nuclear facility in Yongbyon - a step toward its ultimate dismantlement - in exchange for much-needed energy aid and political concessions. However, Pyongyang halted that process more than a year ago and later abandoned the pact amid international censure for a series of nuclear and missile tests.

North Korean officials restarted the nuclear facilities in April in retaliation for a U.N. rebuke of a rocket launch widely criticized as an illicit test of its long-range missile technology. The country also kicked out international nuclear monitors.

The North then conducted its second-ever nuclear test in May and later launched a series of banned ballistic missile tests, prompting the U.N. Security Council to toughen sanctions against the regime.

In September, North Korea said it was in the final stage of reprocessing spent fuel rods, and claimed it had succeeded in enriching uranium, a process that would give the regime a second way to build atomic bombs.

Tuesday's announcement was designed to hurry along negotiations, analysts said.

"North Korea is pressuring the United States to decide quickly whether it wants to resolve the standoff through bilateral talks or allow the (plutonium) to be used for atomic weapons," North Korea expert Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University said.

Is it that time already, they have been quiet for awhile.

"Prease hurry, needs more bwibes qrickry."





 

Irans gotten too much attention

I'd been wondering what bill clinton traded for the reporters.

Kim's bank account & fuel bunkers must be low....




And Korean winters are a bitch, esp up north...




Time for more extortion of oil & money from the USA....

 

They may be able to make three to eight nukes if the work day and night for another four years.   We have missles that carry TEN warheads each and we know all ten will go bang when we launch them.  We have over a thousand of those missles, at least until the Messiah disarms us and "levels the playing field" for his communist and muslim brothers.  


Three idiot countries with ten nukes between them is a non-issue.  Not having the balls to explain to them what happens if they mis-use their crappy little arsenal is the real crying shame of all this.  The simple fact is we appear to gutless they think they can actually harm us and that is because we have no spines in Washington DC.

The only persons who are surprised by this are the Obama Administration and the liberals in Congress.  

YANKEE IMPERIALIST LIES! NORTH KOREA IS STRONG, WITH MANY ATOMIC BOMBS TO SMITE THE YANKEE AND JAPANESE HORDES FROM SACRED KOREAN SOIL!!

WE WILL BE LED TO VICTORY BY THE GREAT GENERAL, KIM JONG-IL, ETERNAL PRESIDENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF BEST KOREA, CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE COMMISSION, SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE INVINCIBLE KOREAN PEOPLE'S ARMY, GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE GLORIOUS WORKER'S PARTY OF BEST KOREA, FALCON OF SOCIALISM, AND DEAR LEADER OF THE PEACE LOVING KOREAN PEOPLE!!!

Wah. In the end it is properly cheaper to pay NK to shut up. Unless we can convince China to bitchslap them for us.

Too bad the Bush administration messed up and didn't continue further with what the Clinton administration was able to accomplished with North Korea.  Just keep blaming obama though.

I'm so scared, I'll let them have Congress as hostages.

Okay, so when they say they're not developing a bomb, they're lying, but when they say they've managed to enrich material, we believe them?

You have to give credit to Kim Jung Il at some level; at least he is openly flaunting the fact that he is weaponizing his plutonium rather than the Iraninan BS story of using it for "peaceful purposes".

North Korea has already tested a nuclear bomb.

Does this mean that Zero has to give back the Nobel Peace Prize now?

I wonder what NK would do if they suddenly found their reactor and nuclear "arsenal" under several million tons of broken concrete.

Yes.  Because appeasing dictators works so well.

What is the alternative? The NK regime isn't going anywhere without starting a major war. Sure we could crush their balls militarily but at what cost. How would China feel? What would the likely destruction of South Korea do?

Note the the US Politicians............

GREENMAIL doesn't work.............you fail again.

Aloha, Mark

You're fucking kidding aren't you?  Carter and Clinton gave them the go-ahead by backing down and signing treaties allowing them to keep going.

Their crops failed this year and now over 9 million North Koreans are starving. They are going to keep demanding food and money as things get worse and nobody wants to give them anymore food or money or supplies.
 

It's probably a good idea to prop them up until Kim dies and their government collapses... Something which isn't going to take long.

 

Ronrey.....I'm so ronrey...

Considering we haven't seen ONE mushroom cloud to prove they've got atom bombs and they can't build a missile that doesn't explode on the launch pad or crash into the ocean, pardon me if I'm not overly concerned about North Korea's "nuclear arsenal".

Especially considering North Korea's army is basically a the 1960's Chinese army caught in a time warp, and their air force is laughable compared to Cuba's air force, for fuck's sake. Shit, NORTH KOREA STILL HAS T-34 TANKS FROM WORLD WAR FUCKING TWO IN ACTIVE SERVICE.

Meanwhile, South Korea actually has a navy, their air force is pretty darn advanced, their army is pretty darn advanced, and they're just beginning to field the world's most expensive and advanced MBT (the K2) in active service, with more on the way.

And then there's Japan, with Asia's OTHER most advanced military, sitting just offshore of Korea.

And the US Navy and troops stationed in South Korea and Japan.

And the fact that even in the 1950's, North Korea had Chinese troops doing most of its fighting and STILL couldn't beat the US.

I actually consider Chavez more of a threat. Sure, North Korea could do some serious damage to South Korea (all that arty aimed at the capital) before getting taken down like a little bitch. But Venezuela actually has a fairly advanced (if tiny) air force (F-16's and Su-30's), tiny but decent armored forces (AMX-30's, AMX-13's, and Scorpions with 90mm guns), and they're buying diesel-electric subs off the Russians that could pose a threat to our shipping if they started shit with us. But North Korea doesn't even have the possibility of doing that little harm to the US itself.

And considering that muslims and communists (not that muslims are involved here) are essentially pathological liars who love to talk like they're tough shit when it's obvious they're anything but, again, pardon me if I don't lose any sleep over North Korea.

No, they set off an explosion small enough to be done by conventional explosives, that took place underground, and CLAIMED they set off an atom bomb.

And an atom bomb and nuclear bomb are two different things. Atom bombs are much more primitive.

It might just be that KIM's son.............will be the next President of N. Korea.

And, he will probably have no interest in loosing his new job (once he get's it).  



Taken from Wikipedia.

Aloha, Mark

PS................

Mel Brooks: "It's good to be the KING."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwAiotTksDA

If they keep it up we're going to do something. I'm tellin you...............

Unless we get a radiation/EMP burst during one of these detonations, there's no proof the NorKs actually have atom bombs. Even if they do, so what? Their missiles are shit. Nazi Germany was bombing England with rockets and these assholes can't even get something THAT sophisticated working, much less what is needed to deliver a bulky, heavy, delicate warhead of questionable reliability in its construction.

Just ignore the North Koreans and stop bribing them not to do shit, because they're going to do it anyway. Stop sending them food and money and they won't be able to do anything. And if they do start shit, it's going to end pretty quick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_North_Korean_nuclear_test
The latest test was definitely a nuclear weapon. Even the US government acknowledges that.

ETA: I also suggest that you read up on the definition of a nuclear weapon.

Atom bomb vs. Nuclear bomb?  You may be thinking of the difference between a crude critical mass wedge/gun Uranium design like "little boy" , vs. the more sophisticated plutonium implosion device like "Fat man"... Or the further difference in a fusion enhanced tritium core fission bomb where the neutrons produced enhance the completness of the plutonium fission, or the fusion/hydrogen bomb where a fission bomb provides the heat and pressure for the fusion, but they aren't differentiated by "atom bomb" and "nuclear bomb".

Nuclear bomb or Atomic bomb could refer to the fission/fusion/fission designs, or to a fusion "H" bomb, but they're ALL atomic and/or nuclear. Whether it's fission or fusion, atoms and nuclei are involved.

Hell... I'm a nuclear-atomic person even, being in posession of several billion/trillion atomic nuclei.

Reading that article, there's no "definitely" about it. It had a yield smaller than the Fatman bomb we dropped in WWII and no radionucleotides were detected. Which, for a bomb that small, underground, isn't entirely out of the question, but it still makes it impossible to say for certain it was an atom bomb and not conventional explosives.

Still no proof.

Does anyone read the links that  they post?

Well shit, don't reach critical mass, man! It'd be hell on your car suspension!