North Korea says uranium enrichment in final stage

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said Friday that it is in the final stages of enriching uranium, a process that could give the nation a second way to make nuclear bombs in addition to its known plutonium-based program.

North Korea informed the U.N. Security Council it is forging ahead with its nuclear programs in defiance of international calls to abandon its atomic ambitions, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report early Friday.

The dispatch said plutonium "is being weaponized," and that uranium enrichment — a program North Korea revealed in recent months — was entering the "completion phase." Experts had long suspected that the North had a hidden uranium enrichment program, which would give the regime a second source of nuclear material.

Uranium enrichment is a simpler method of building nuclear weapons than reprocessing plutonium, and it can be enriched in relatively inconspicuous factories that can better evade spy-satellite detection.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said Thursday night that he had no immediate reaction to the North Korean announcement.

A South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The North's announcement came a day after a U.S. special envoy arrived in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on how to get North Korea back on track with its commitments to nuclear disarmament.

Stephen Bosworth, the special envoy to North Korea, was to arrive in Seoul later Friday for similar consultations with South Korean officials before traveling to Tokyo on Sunday as part of an Asia tour amid recent conciliatory moves by Pyongyang.

His visit to the region aims to "continue consultations with our partners and allies on how to best convince North Korea that it must live up to its obligations ... and take irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization," the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said in a statement.

North Korea called the decision to push ahead with its nuclear programs a reaction to the Security Council's moves to tighten sanctions against the regime for testing a nuclear bomb in May. The report called the resolution a "wanton violation of the DPRK's sovereignty and dignity." DPRK stands for the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North views its nuclear program as a security guarantee against what it claims is U.S. hostility and its alleged plans to attack Pyongyang.

The U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have been negotiating with North Korea for years on dismantling its nuclear program in exchange for aid and other concessions.

North Korea warned on Friday that it would be "left with no choice but to take yet stronger self-defensive countermeasures" if the Security Council continues the standoff, KCNA said without elaborating on what it meant by the countermeasures.

Meanwhile, the North also said it has never objected to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and left open possibility for dialogue with some permanent members of the Security Council, an apparent reference to the U.S.

"We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions," KCNA said.

The North has long sought one-on-one negotiations with Washington on the nuclear program, hoping to raise its international profile. The U.S. has said it is willing to hold direct talks with Pyongyang but only on the sidelines of the six-nation disarmament talks.

North Korea walked away from the talks earlier this year. North Korea also conducted its second nuclear test in May, drawing international condemnation and new U.N. sanctions.

The North's move also came amid its conciliatory overtures to Seoul and Washington. The North freed two U.S. journalists and five South Koreans, including four fishermen, in recent weeks.

The two Koreas also agreed to restart reunions of Korean family separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and restored regular traffic to a joint industrial park in the North.