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The launch of Hwasong 10 Musudan missiles

In the 2016 Defense White Paper that was released on Jan. 11, South Korea’s Defense Ministry concluded that North Korea has enhanced its nuclear capability by increasing its plutonium holdings to than 50kg.

The White Paper, which is published every other year, was posted to the Defense Ministry’s website on Jan. 11. The White Paper will also be distributed in complete printed form at the end of this month. The White Paper’s plutonium estimate is up 10kg from the around 40kg of plutonium that the 2014 defense white paper estimated was in North Korea’s possession.

“This reflects the fact that the 5MW reactor in Yongbyon has been running for more than 2 years since being reactivated in 2013,” said an official with the Defense Ministry. Given that between 4 and 6kg of plutonium goes into a single nuclear bomb, North Korea has enough plutonium to manufacture 10 such bombs.

The white paper concluded that North Korea has “made a substantial level of progress” on its highly enriched uranium, but it did not provide any specific figures. This White Paper also repeated its 2014 assessment of nuclear weapon miniaturization, only noting that North Korea had “reached a significant level.”

The Defense Ministry’s plutonium estimates are somewhat higher than those of American analysts. Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear physicist and professor at Stanford University, and his colleagues estimated in the winter issue of the Korea Observer, a quarterly journal published by the Institute of Korean Studies, that North Korea had between 20 and 40kg of plutonium, while David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), placed the amount between 35.5 and 42kg in an article published in June 2016. The 5MW reactor at Yongbyon was active between 1986 and 1994 and between 2003 and 2007, and it has been active since 2013 until the present, while reprocessing of spent fuel has taken place on five occasions at least. The conflicting estimates result from different analytical assumptions, including the actual operational status of the 5MW reactor, which can produce up to 6kg a year, and the amount of plutonium used in North Korea’s five nuclear tests.

There is much less certainty about North Korea’s holdings of highly enriched uranium. The North’s uranium enrichment program was confirmed when the North surprisingly revealed its centrifuges to a team of experts led by Hecker in Nov. 2010. 2,000 centrifuges can produce 40kg of highly enriched uranium each year, which is enough to produce two nuclear weapons. In 2013, North Korea doubled the size of its centrifuge facility. There is also speculation that North Korea is running additional centrifuges in a secret location. It is for such reasons that the Defense Ministry did not offer a concrete estimate of how much highly enriched uranium North Korea possesses.

The white paper confirmed the existence of the Scud-ER (extended-range) missile, which has a range of 1,000km. While there were claims that North Korea possessed not just the Scud-B (300km range) and the Scud-C (500km range) but also the Scud-ER, the white paper provided the first actual confirmation of these claims. When North Korea launched three missiles in a row on Sept. 5, 2016, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that they were “Rodong missiles.” But a military official revealed on Jan. 11 that further analysis had confirmed that the missiles were not Rodong but Scud-ER.

North Korea‘s cyberwarfare unit has grown by around 800 people over the past two years to more than 6,800 people. The size of North Korea’s standing army (including its ground forces, navy, air force and strategic units) has grown as well, increasing by 80,000 over the past two years to more than 1.28 million. This is twice the size of South Korea‘s standing army of 625,000 people. But the increase in North Korea’s military comes from incorporating 80,000 members of paramilitary units in the ground forces, which means that the total size of the armed forces has not changed, the Defense Ministry explained.

In related news, the working copy of the White Paper that was provided to the media did not include a picture of President Park Geun-hye or any information about her activities, which was speculated to be a response to her recent impeachment. Three photos of Park were printed in the white paper two years ago. The Defense Ministry responded to the controversy by saying that two extra photos of Park would be included in the final copy.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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