NORTH Korea’s latest pronouncement on its plans for nuclear weapons may not be all it seems. The state claims to have made a significant advance in its nuclear weapons programme, but this may be no more than tough talk.
On 2 October, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued a curiously worded statement in which it said it had “switched” its plutonium towards boosting its nuclear deterrent. This is no surprise: it had already announced that it had extracted the plutonium by reprocessing 8000 spent fuel rods from a reactor in Yongbyon, 100 kilometres north of the capital, Pyongyang. That claim was supported by data…
