The Marmot’s Hole

The supposedly big news is that a North Korean official has apparently confirmed that North Korea weaponized the plutonium it got from reprocessing about 8,000 fuel rods from its Yonbyon facility. Courtesy AP:

Warning that the danger of war on the Korean peninsula “is snowballing,” Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon provided details Monday of the nuclear deterrent that he said North Korea has developed for self-defense.

He told the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting that Pyongyang had “no other option but to possess a nuclear deterrent” because of U.S. policies that he claimed were designed to “eliminate” North Korea and make it “a target of preemptive nuclear strikes.”

“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 told a news conference after his speech.

Now, neither this nor the Korean version of what was apparently said (which seems to be a translation of what AP and other foreign press reports have been saying) would indicate anything other than usual North Korean diplo-speak. At a press conference later, however, Choe elaborated a little more:

Choe was asked at the news conference what was included in the nuclear deterrent.

“We have already made clear that we have already reprocessed 8,000 wasted fuel rods and transformed them into arms,” he said, without elaborating on the kinds or numbers.

When asked if the fuel had been turned into actual weapons, not just weapons-grade material, Choe said, “We declared that we weaponized this.”

Well, this would seem to be the first time I can remember that North Korea has actually come out and said in no uncertain terms, “We built nuclear weapons.”

The South Korean response has been unsurprising so far. A government official told Yonhap News on Tuesday that the statement didn’t really represent a new development, as North Korea had been claiming it had a nuclear deterrent, and that it was hard to believe North Korea had finished reprocessing all 8,000 fuel rods, given the country’s technological level. The government also said that in order to ascertain the real meaning behind Choe’s statement, we must wait for North Korea’s official position on the matter.