Seoul: North Korea will eventually be able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit in a missile, a news report said Sunday.
Seoul’s Yonhap news agency, citing the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA), said Pyongyang developing the technology to achieve miniaturisation was inevitable.
“It is believed that North Korea has not completed the technology for the miniaturisation… of nuclear warheads,” KIDA said in a report to be issued in January, according to Yonhap.
But KIDA said it is “just a matter of time”, noting the country has a high-explosives test site and an estimated 3,000 nuclear scientists and researchers.
The North has 28 state organisations for nuclear development led by the powerful National Defence Commission and the ruling communist party, the KIDA report said, according to Yonhap.
It has conducted nuclear tests twice — in October, 2006, and in May this year.
KIDA officials were not immediately available for comment.
The North quit six-party nuclear disarmament talks with the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan in April, after the UN Security Council’s censure of its long-range rocket launch.
This month US envoy Stephen Bosworth went to Pyongyang for talks — the first official dialogue since Barack Obama took office — aimed at persuading the North to return to the six-nation process.
The two sides reached a “common understanding” on the need to resume the six-party talks but set no date.
Experts have said the North’s continued nuclear weapons development and missile capability make a dangerous combination.
The North has about 600 Scud missiles capable of hitting targets in South Korea, and possibly also of reaching Japanese territory.
There are another 200 Rodong-1 missiles which could reach Tokyo.
In addition the North has three times test-launched long-range Taepodong missiles, most recently in April, with an advanced model which could theoretically hit Alaska and parts of the US west coast
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The North has test-fired 22 short-range missiles since May, KIDA said.
