North Korea has threatened to escalate production of nuclear weapons materials and to restart a long-shuttered plutonium reactor. It is Pyongyang’s latest attempt to extract concessions from the US by creating war hysteria. North Korea’s atomic energy department has indicated that scientists in that country will soon begin work on a uranium enrichment plant and a graphite-moderated reactor that would produce a bomb’s worth of plutonium every year. It is a public declaration that North Korea is going to have bomb fuel. The plutonium reactor started in 1986 had been shut down in 2007 as part of international nuclear disarmament talks. These talks were later stalled.
The announcement has caused grave concern in Washington and among its allies. North Korea’s attempt to build a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach the US is also cause for alarm, though that may take years. Pyongyang appears to be oscillating between nuclear vows and nuclear threats in recent weeks. It has made efforts to start talks for disarmament- for- aid. Its leader, Kim Jong-un is however held up as a powerful military commander. A North Korean expert has said that the new move is to overcome the country’s acute power shortage. At the same time, it is out to bolster its nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity. The country seems caught in a wave of megalomania as a small country like North Korea cannot really pose a threat to the US. Surely the time has come to cry halt to the wasteful nuclear arms race. That applies to the US most of all. North Korea should learn a lesson from the South which has pulled off an economic miracle.