DPRK Forum

The fresh round of talks restarted in China, and while it is said they are very close, nobody signed the dotted line yet. When that will happen is another thing altogether, so it is still more “hurry up and wait”. When dealing with North Korea, this is always the case anyhow.

Meanwhile, with regard to suspicions that it has a secret uranium enrichment, North Korea reportedly admitted to importing about 150 tons of hard aluminum pipes, a material for a centrifugal separator, from Russia in the past. The pipes can be used to make some 2,600 centrifugal separators for the enrichment of uranium, a South Korean government official said.

North Korea disclosed this in Washington-Pyongyang working talks on normalizing bilateral relations in Geneva early this month. But it did not say whether it had actually used the pipes to make centrifuges and enrich uranium. North Korea will reportedly deal with this issue during the process of its declaration of nuclear programs.

A South Korean government official said, “Despite North Korea’s admission that it imported aluminum pipes, we can’t yet say it has made (weapons-grade) enriched uranium with the pipes. Many other components are also needed to make centrifugal separators.”

However, Russia denies the charges, but it seems there was some stuttering:

Continue reading ‘So close but no cigar’