Amongst everything happening in the world, recently North Korea joined in on the havoc by restarting a nuclear reactor that is believed to have produced plutonium for atomic weapons to enlarge its nuclear arsenal amid long-dormant nuclear diplomacy with the United States, putting South Korea and the U.S. in troubled waters.
The Yongbyon reactor is at the heart of North Korea’s nuclear program. North of Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to the country's first nuclear reactor and is the only known source of plutonium for North Korea's weapons programme.
The possible operation of the reactor may also be an indication that Pyongyang is using a nearby radiochemical laboratory to separate plutonium from spent fuel previously removed from the reactor. This is a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions.
While uranium enrichment is believed to occur at other sites in North Korea, Yongbyon is thought to be the only place where the regime makes plutonium.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which relies on satellite imagery to carry out assessments in North Korea, said that the Yongbyon nuclear reactor has been discharging cooling water since July. This is the first sign of operational activity ever since December 2018. IAEA has had no access to North Korea since Pyongyang expelled its inspectors in 2009, hence, all the weapon production has been monitored at a distance. The country subsequently resumed nuclear testing.
Even though it is unclear exactly how much weapons-grade plutonium has been, it is estimated that the Kim regime could produce about one bomb’s worth of plutonium in a year.
At a summit in Vietnam in 2019, with the then-U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to dismantle Yongbyon in exchange for relief from a range of international sanctions over nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. The U.S. rejected that offer as insufficient, making nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington come to a standstill, which is why this may be a warning sign towards the USA to withdraw its “hostile” policy on the country.
North Korea is countering the U.S. on the principle of power for power and goodwill for goodwill since nuclear talks between them have remained stalled for nearly two years. Each country is holding fire, waiting for the other.
There may be much reason as to why there is a resumption of activity at Yongbyon but one of the main presumptions could be North Korea’s desire to again try to make a selling point in future talks and to grab the Biden administration’s attention, given that it was an easily detectable move since Korea doesn’t necessarily need plutonium to keep making nuclear weapons.
With the U.S. focus on the Afghanistan withdrawal, North Koreans likely saw a return to Yongbyon activity as a “limited shock tactic,”; a way of North Korea saying, ‘Look at us, too.’