What does the regime say about its programme?

Q&A: North Korea nuclear programme

24 April 2012

North Korea's nuclear programme remains a source of deep concern for the international community, amid reports from South Korea suggesting Pyongyang is planning a third nuclear test. The BBC looks at North Korea's nuclear ambitions and multi-national efforts to curtail them.

Has North Korea got the bomb?

Not yet. In 2006 and again in 2009 North Korea announced that it had conducted successful nuclear weapons tests.

Satellite data from P'unggye-yok, in a remote area in the east of the country, appeared to tally with claims that the experiments had been conducted underground.

The North is believed to possess enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least six bombs - but experts say it has not yet solved the problem of making a nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a missile.

Opinions vary on how close the regime is to completing this process of "miniaturisation".

American expert Siegfried Hecker told South Korea's Yonhap news agency late last year that a third nuclear test could be sufficient for them to master the technology.

Mr Hecker is one of the few people to have seen the North's capabilities first-hand. In 2010, he was shown a uranium-enrichment facility with 1,000 centrifuges and said he was "stunned" by the sophistication of the plant.

He said he saw no evidence that the fuel was for anything other than generating power, but added that it could be "readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel".

What does the regime say about its programme?

Over the years Pyongyang has issued brash, contradictory and often inflammatory statements about its programme.

After the 2009 nuclear test, an official communique stated that the test was "part of measures to enhance the Republic's self-defensive nuclear deterrent in all directions".

And in a rare unguarded moment after the 2006 test, deputy foreign minister Kang Sok-ju told reporters: "Why would we abandon nuclear weapons? Are you saying we conducted a nuclear test in order to abandon them?"

Yet Pyongyang also regularly proclaims that it is committed to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

It has frequently promised to give up part or all of its programme in return for aid.

In February 2012, the regime promised to allow UN inspectors back into the country and to suspend uranium enrichment in return for US food aid.

But shortly after that it launched a rocket in apparent defiance of UN resolutions banning missile tests, leaving that deal dead in the water.

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