It’s been a tumultuous week in North Korea.
Last weekend North Korea launched its second-ever satellite and conducted a new nuclear test. There are growing concerns in South Korea and the U.S. that the secretive country could develop more significant nuclear capabilities and the technology to turn that into a powerful weapon.
“Also, it appears there are some reports that they have executed one of their top military commanders, and interestingly enough, they are calling a Committee Congress in May,” said Rebecca Cruise, the assistant dean of the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “This is kind of the Workers' Party getting together to solidify the leader's power over the country. This is the first time that they've done this since 1980, so this is significant.”
The U.S. took notice, sending President Obama legislation imposing tougher sanctions on Pyongyang, and spending $50 million on communication into the isolated nation.
On Tuesday, the U.S. national intelligence director James Clapper told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea was a more worrisome nuclear threat than Iran, according to The New York Times’ Mark Landler:
“Pyongyang continues to produce fissile material and develop a submarine-launched ballistic missile,” Mr. Clapper said. “It is also committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile that’s capable of posing a direct threat to the United States, although the system has not been flight tested.” In his testimony, Mr. Clapper put North Korea at the top of his list of nuclear- and proliferation-related threats. American intelligence agencies say that North Korea has expanded its uranium-enrichment facility at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon and restarted a plutonium production reactor. North Korea “could begin to recover plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel within a matter of weeks to months,” Mr. Clapper said.
Cruise says the anxiety all centers around the fact that the U.S. knows next to nothing about North Korea’s activities and intentions.
“The nuclear testing that went on earlier in January, there's some indication that it was an earthquake, and then we heard it was testing, and then it was an earthquake, and so we simply don't know,” Cruise said. “And media reports are very vague. So yes, it's a concern because we don't know what they're capable of doing were they to have the weapons.”
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