North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment site, a Swedish return and more

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toured a uranium enrichment facility to inspect advanced centrifuges, according to state media last week, providing a rare look inside its nuclear program. NK News Deputy Managing Editor Alannah Hill joins the podcast to discuss the message Pyongyang sought to send by confirming the existence of a second enrichment […]

the the world. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News Podcast. This episode was recorded on Tuesday, the 17th of September 2024. That is Chuseok Day here in South Korea and well, probably North Korea too, but they don't really do much with it. But we welcome Alana Hill back to the NK News Podcast studio. Welcome, Alana. Thank you and happy Chuseok everyone. Happy Chuseok and North Korea has kindly sent some Chuseok gifts to South Korea. What have they sent?

We had some early Chuseok gifts over the weekend, more trash balloons. Not so successful it seems. The JCS had spotted about 50 on Saturday, but only 10 actually made it to South Korea. And then on Sunday they spotted another 120, but only 40 fell in the South. So yeah, still sending them, still causing problems. One of them caused another fire, I believe in a warehouse again or a way that work I'm not sure that so the the balloons actually fall because they've got detonators in them And so I don't know if it's been confirmed

But I think they believe that what happened was one of these detonators sparked a fire in a warehouse So yeah, you know we joke about these trash balloons but they do have the potential to cause serious, serious damage. And especially over exactly or over one balloon has fallen on someone and injured them. And I believe they had an arm injury or something. But yeah, over Chuseok weekend, you know, the busiest time of year traffic is crazy. But no, nothing has impacted to such traffic. So, wow.

OK, so keep an eye out for those we haven't seen any yet around here so perhaps they haven't been you know tending them to our coordinates now our fabulous managing editor Brian when he was he was an avid climber I believe it was last weekend he spotted someone he was out climbing so check out the video I put well we posted on our website and also on our social media really cool video fantastic yeah all right so where to from here what's what should we go to next I'm gonna have to refrain from speed talking for the entire podcast but we had just have so much to cover so

I've tried to narrow it down as best as I could but I think start probably the most important stories of last week which was the state media photos of Kim Jong-un at a uranium enrichment facility. Okay. And so we know about Yongbyong, this facility that we've known about for a while now, but these new photos likely confirm the existence of this second enrichment facility for the first time. So these photos that were published analysis that NK Pro has done and that the open

source team at the James Martin Center for non-perifalation studies at the Middlebury Institute, excuse me. Oh, over in Monterey. Yeah, they believe that this is Kangsan is what they think that where they think that this new site is. Ah, so yeah, it's interesting development. And that is, are they, what do we have, pictures of centrifuges? Centrifuges, yeah. And so they had, and also shown before that they had,

this facility had undergone expansion work. So what these new photos have shown is that the new facility could significantly enhance North Korea's ability to produce fissile material and, you know, maybe change estimates that we've seen in the past and make estimates bigger basically. So they could make more nuclear tipped weapons to threaten South Korea, the United States and Japan with. Yes, exactly. So in the days since that revelation we've had some great analyses, one by Jung Min, Jun Han, Shreyas, basically about what message this this visit sends and you know one expert was even suggesting this could serve as stand-in for the DPRK's

seventh nuclear test. Some analysts are suggesting that it's showing that Russia is actually helping North Korea with the technologies they need for these centrifuges. And again, as we've seen in the weeks and months that have gone by cooperation between Russia and North Korea has just gone from strength to strength apparently. Right. Again this week. That would be a big change though because the Russians have for decades said ever since the Soviet Union that we will not give nuclear weapons technology to North Korea. And this is just speculation. Right. We're not sure of that. We're not sure, of course. But again, you know, this week we saw Sergei Shogu,

who was the previous defense minister and is now the secretary of the Security Council, I believe. So he arrived in North Korea. He met with Kim Jong-un for discussions on implementing the pact that Kim and Putin signed earlier this year. Choi Son-hee, North Korea's foreign minister, went to St. Petersburg.

She's gonna be at some forums where Putin will be. So yeah, just this ongoing cooperation. And then again, over the weekend, you have Ukraine's military intelligence chief come out and say that North Korean shipments of weapons to Russia is the worst problem that Ukraine is facing at the moment. The worst problem, wow. Yeah, that's what he said. And that Pyongyang is the leading arm supplier to Moscow. More than more than Iran, more than any other country. Yeah. So

yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. And then another analysis that we had from Chad was talking about how this grand reveal of this of this uranium enrichment facility might have something to do with the US presidential elections so he wrote an excellent piece when where he talked to a lot of different analysts and experts about whether they thought that that might be true and so a lot of differing opinions on that but I'll link that in the show notes for people to have a look at. Oh yeah, a lot of good Chuseok holiday reading here for people who want to stay up to date with North Korea's nuclear threat.

When they're in their food coma and they need a little break, they can have a read. Wow. Okay. So, God, I remember when it was the early 2000s, right, that North Korea revealed that they first had a highly enriched uranium program. And it was when Kelly, Robert Kelly, I think he was the official from the State Department who went there and there was a whole debate about is North Korea saying it has an enriched uranium facility or are they saying we have the right to have such a facility if we want

to and that was a whole debate and of course later on it turned out they did have one and now they've got a second one and it's in Gyeongsang. Yes, yeah, correct. Yeah. All right. Okay. Well, what's next? So next we have Swedish diplomats have returned back to Pyongyang this week. And this is big news. We've been waiting since what spring, I guess,

since there was that trip by the Germans. They went and they did a technical visit to look at the building, see if it's still standing, see if the roof has a leak and can we go in and turn the electricity on? And the Swedes are in that building owned by the Germans, right? That's right. And so there's been, yeah, as you said, there's been talk of this for a long, long time now. But officially this week they've returned to the country's embassy. That's according to Stockholm's foreign ministry.

So that makes Sweden the first Western country to resume operations. Now, technically they'd always continue limited operations, they say. Via Zoom. Via Zoom. Via Zoom with local staff. But this is the first time, yes, that Western diplomats are back in the country. And so yeah, you know, could mean positive signs, could also mean nothing. Only time will tell. But apparently sources have told NK News that Poland and the UK have also got some positive signals

from North Korea about potentially having some of their diplomats back in the country maybe soon. Wow. Okay, but this one is actually confirmed by the Swedes. Yes, we are there. Yes, correct. They've had an important role. They've had an embassy there in North Korea for over 30 years and they've been the, what

they call the covering power. I think that's the right word. So when any Western person gets caught in North Korea, for any reason, the Swedes are the ones who intercede on their behalf with the North Korean foreign ministry. So it's, it's good to see the Swedes are back again. As we saw Travis King, right? Wasn't it the Swedes who, who helped negotiate to get him out? Exactly. Yeah. So a part of the, uh,

the neutral nation supervisory commission as well on the, on the demilitarized zone, the Brits have have had it feels like a kind of a dance of some steps forward and a few steps back again You know that saying we might go in and we're waiting for permission. So now they're they're a bit closer the Brits Sources are saying this but again, you know, we've had a lot of converse, you know talks We've heard lots of things back and forth, as you say, back and forth, back and forth. So we'll just have to wait and see. As you mentioned about that building where I think it's the Swedes and a couple of other countries are housing that same building that Germany owns.

And that's because the East Germans built a giant embassy there back in the communist days, and then after the reunification of Germany, they said they said well let's be efficient and let's rent out bits of space that we don't need anymore to other countries. The efficient Germans. But there hasn't been much word on when the Germans will go back so I don't know if where potentially the people that are renting those buildings will go will they go back to that building or not so yeah yeah, it's still a lot up in the air. It is odd to have the tenants there, but the landlords are still not back yet. Exactly. Yeah.

So yeah, what next in Atlanta? Okay, so I'm trying to, again, not rush through everything, but I believe it was yesterday we found out that North Korea's next Supreme People's Assembly, which is basically the rubber stamp parliament, will convene their next session on October 7th. And this is important because this is when North Korea will amend their constitution. And this is the first time that North Korea is holding one of these sessions since Kim Jong-un came out and said, we're done with reunification, that's off the table. So it'll be interesting to keep an eye out when this SPA meeting does happen.

What is going to happen to North Korea's Constitution? Are they going to change their, well it seems very likely they will change their Constitution in terms of unification, but are they going to change the border? Are they going to redefine, you know, those kinds of things? So yeah, that's the one thing that we're going to be looking out for coming up in October. Right. Article 9 of the DPIK constitution specifically mentions peaceful unification of the Fatherland. So it'll be interesting to see whether they change that to just simply remove the word peaceful or something more. Yeah, totally remove it. You know, yeah, exactly. It's hard to tell what will happen, but something we'll definitely be keeping a close eye on. Right, and that's also, of course,

articles that also talk about the complete victory of socialism. So let's see where that goes. Now, of course, there are a lot of scholars who say that the Constitution, in terms of actual running of North Korea on a day-to-day basis, it's not that important. It's not as important as, for example, a document called the Ten Principles of Establishing Monolithic Leadership Ideology, which is something that every North Korean adult has to memorize and measure themselves against in their weekly self-criticism sessions, but the Constitution is still important for external messaging to the rest of the world.

And does that document speak about reunification at all? The 10 Principles also mentions unification a couple of times, mainly in the preamble but also in I think the first or the second of the principles. So that was last revised in 2021 and before that in 2013. So it would be quite quick to have another one. But since it's a document that every North Korean has to read and memorize, they may be interested in reviewing that document and making some mends too. Absolutely, yeah. We'll just have to wait and see. Wow, okay. And one more thing we've got time for.

Okay, a final quick one I want to finish up on because it's so interesting. Our satellites Thalus in the office did a great job. Our eye in the sky Collins Worker. Collins Worker and Ms. Jung Min Kim actually spotted this one. So yeah, it was really interesting. State media photos again showed all these pictures of Kim Jong-un observing this special forces training session so we had all these soldiers in this classroom you know eyes forward looking at all the satellite imagery and Jong-min and Colin were able to

identify that what they were looking at was South Korea's Army Strategic Missile Command which is this site located in Wondu in Kangwon Province. Oh, that's where the missile command is. Yes. So that's what they were able to say that they were looking at and training to basically infiltrate. Right. And so they were able to look at all these kind of blurred satellite images

and they did a really, really good job. And some of the satellite imagery was was actually outdated. But yeah, I would really recommend everyone. I'll leave that one again in the show notes and have a quick look and read through that one because it's great. It's very interesting. Yeah, that is very interesting. It's always fun to see what you can see in the background on a North Korean computer screen or a North Korean whiteboard or a North Korean map or something like that.

And what they've matched, they've literally matched like two poles on a road. It's fantastic, they're amazing. I'm always in awe of their skills. So Kim Jong-un was there at this meeting dressed in, he wasn't in his white suit, he was in sort of a khaki jacket it looks like. It's kind of looking around and we've got some North Korean military types in their short sleeve jackets. That's a particular peculiarity of North Korean formal wear is that military jackets with short sleeves are allowed. Yeah, they're not that strict. All right, well thank you very much, Alana, for coming on the NK News Podcast. For this special Chewsock episode, we're going to get this one out for the people in the next few hours. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Jaco. Thank you. See you again soon.

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