Kim Jong-un inspects new nuke facility, vows to ‘exponentially’ bolster arsenal

Seoul, June 4: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited a newly launched nuclear material production facility, vowing to “exponentially” strengthen the country’s nuclear arsenal, state media reported on Thursday.
Kim made the visit the previous day, accompanied by key party officials, reports Yonhap, quoting the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), without disclosing the facility’s location or other details.
Seoul’s defence ministry said in a press briefing that it assessed the newly revealed facility as a uranium enrichment site.
Currently, North Korea is believed to house uranium enrichment facilities in three sites — Yongbyon, Kangson and Kusong. It remains unclear whether the report suggests the existence of a fourth location.
Kim said the country’s “weapons-grade nuclear material production capacity more than doubled” over the past five years, attributing the gains to the country’s nuclear scientists, according to the report.
“Potential threats and unpredictable long-term crises further highlight the urgency” of expanding the nuclear deterrent “both in quality and quantity and in a sustained and accelerated way,” Kim said, signalling that Pyongyang has no intention of stepping back from its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea also said it held an “important consultative meeting for bolstering up the nuclear forces” on the same day during which Kim issued “action guidelines for rapidly accelerating the qualitative and quantitative” buildup of Pyongyang’s nuclear forces.
“Today we have updated the digits that are critical for our nuclear activities,” Kim said at the meeting, adding Pyongyang had “confirmed the order of priority” for a plan to “beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate.”
He called it a “historic event that has set up an epochal milestone in rapidly upgrading our nuclear capabilities.”
Photos released by the KCNA show rows of cylindrical centrifuges used for uranium enrichment inside the facility. In another photo, documents believed to be related to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program are blurred on a table where Kim is seated. (IANS)