Report: N. Korea makes ‘stunning’ leaps in ‘astonishingly modern’ nuclear facility

A report that North Korea has made alarming, secret progress in its nuclear enrichment activities sparked alarm about Pyongyang’s “belligerent behavior,” in the words of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen.

Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, on Nov. 12 witnessed an “astonishingly modern” new secret nuclear processing facility, where he saw the “stunning” progress made by the reclusive nation, according to wire reports.

“Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges, all neatly aligned and plumbed below us,” Hecker wrote in a report published Saturday.

“It is North Korea continuing on a path that is destabilizing for the region,” Mullen said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, adding that the news was “very dangerous.”

“Today’s troubling report underscores the need for continued close consultations with South Korea and our other partners with the goal of reconvening multilateral talks on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a statement Sunday. “North Korea’s activities should also prompt the UN to reexamine the effectiveness of efforts to implement existing sanctions against the North’s nuclear program.

“As a close and influential ally and North Korea’s largest trading partner, China is well-positioned to enhance the international community’s enforcement activities.”The Hecker report comes on the heels of a U.N. Security Council report that found Pyongyang has a thriving $100 million per year weapons and missile export business in spite of the sanctions and accuses the North of using a “broad range of techniques to mask its financial transactions” and falsifying shipping container labels and ship manifests.

In addition, the report utilizes evidence gleaned by various sources including the International Atomic Energy Agency to conclude that North Korea is active in “nuclear and ballistic missile related activities in certain other countries including Iran, Syria and Myanmar.”

“Instead of continuing its failed strategy of seeking to engage the regime in endless negotiation, the administration must ratchet up pressure on Pyongyang,” Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the likely incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement earlier this month. “…We must act quickly and firmly to stop North Korea’s proliferation before it ends up costing American lives and those of our allies.”

Kerry said Sunday that the new revelations called for a “comprehensive approach” to stem the North’s activities.

“Only a comprehensive approach that can achieve security, peace, and development offers any hope of verifiably eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons,” Kerry said. “The longer it takes to launch that effort, the longer the United States and its allies will be forced to cope with the destabilizing consequences of the DPRK’s reckless and irresponsible pursuit and export of highly-sensitive technologies.”