Sanctions and tension

By Tong Kim

North Korea has vowed to conduct a “high-profile” third nuclear test, targeting the United States and warning against South Korea’s participation in the implementation of a new U.N. sanction. U.S.-ROK military sources conclude that preparations for the test have been completed for some time at its underground nuclear site at Punggye-ri. It could be conducted anytime.

Another nuclear test will certainly aggravate the already heightened tension in Korea; imposing a difficult security and diplomatic challenge for the incoming Korean government and the second-term Barack Obama administration. South Korea’s next president says she will take “strong measures” through international cooperation against new North Korean provocations.

The North tested its first plutonium bomb on Oct. 9, 2006, with an estimated yield of one kiloton and its second one on May 25, 2009, which was assessed to have produced a more successful yield of 2 to 7 kilotons, according to different schools of scientists. The first nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 20 kilotons.

With these tests, the North has no doubt that it demonstrated its capability to produce a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. In the fall of 2008, Pyongyang declared in the six-party process that it had extracted 34 kilograms of plutonium from reprocessing spent-fuels. However, it is not known whether it has the technology to miniaturize a nuclear device to fit atop a missile ― short or long range.

If the two tests consumed 10 to 14 kilograms of fissile material ― 5 to 7 kilograms for each test, the North would have only about 20 kilograms of plutonium left, enough to make five bombs. Since the North disabled its plutonium facilities, no more plutonium was produced, and no work has been undertaken to restore the disabled, old and almost obsolete nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

With a limited inventory of plutonium, the North may have turned to highly-enriched uranium to test a smaller device for a more powerful yield that is missile deliverable. Pyongyang showed its uranium enrichment plant operating with 2000 centrifuges in November 2010 to Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. If the uranium enrichment program had successfully continued, it could have produced enough HEU to make four to five bombs a year.

Due to inaccessibility to what’s going on deep inside the tunnel for nuclear testing, there is no way of knowing whether the impending test is uranium or plutonium based until it has been conducted. The North Koreans have set up cover at the test tunnel to interfere with monitoring by the U.S., a signal for an imminent test, as they covered the rocket launcher immediately before their latest firing.

U.S. reconnaissance planes equipped with information gathering devices are airborne along the east coast of North Korea to collect data to assess the physical impact of the expected new nuclear test. However, there are no plans for military action to be taken by the ROK-U.S. alliance, even if the North goes ahead to carry out the threat of a new nuclear provocation.

In the event of a new nuclear test, the North would likely be subject to more sanctions. South Korea has just been given a seat on the U.N. Security Council, and it will be in a position to initiate harsher sanctions than ever, including a blockade or a more intrusive action. Consequently, this will incur more provocations from the North.

In rhetoric, the defiant North is strengthening its nuclear deterrent by another nuclear test. In practice, it is angrily reacting to the January UNSC Resolution 2087, which expanded the scope of sanctions to punish the North’s December rocket launch. The North claimed the launch was part of its scientific space program. However, the United States and others viewed it as a test of long-range missile technology.

The latest rocket launch may have proved the North’s basic capability for an intercontinental ballistic missile, although it is questionable whether the North has the technology for atmospheric re-entry to deliver a warhead. No weapons specialist believes the North will achieve target accuracy for many years to come.

At this point, the North Korean nuclear weapons, with no miniaturized nuclear warhead and an incomplete delivery system, is not a direct threat to the security of the United States. However, North Korea’s new mobile missile launchers ― known as KN-08 ― which were first shown in a parade last April and which have been deployed ― appear to be an additional threat to South Korea and Japan.

The South has worked out an agreement with the U.S. to produce its own missiles with a range of 800 kilometers that can target all parts of the North. The South has just succeeded in the satellite launch of Naro. The alliance is intensifying its defensive exercises, which the North sees as preparation for an invasion.

The North has always reacted to sanctions, which it sees as “a hostile declaration of war” against it. Whereas sanctions have not worked, they have always been followed by more provocations. A cycle of provocation and sanctions can only be broken when parties engage in dialogue for understanding to build trust, while it is important to maintain a prudent, but not excessive, deterrence. What’s your take?

The writer is a research professor at the Illmin Institute of International Relations at Korea University and a visiting professor at the University of North Korean Studies. He is also an ICAS fellow. Reach him at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.