Following nearly seven years of adamant denials, North Korea announced this month that it can enrich uranium — a simpler method of building nuclear weapons than reprocessing plutonium, according to Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Federation of American Scientists [2]. For the past decade, efforts by the U.S. and others have focused primarily on blocking Pyongyang's production of plutonium. Oelrich told Global Security Newswire [3] that reports that while the advancement level of the North's uranium-enrichment program is not known, he guessed it is probably "in its infancy." However, Seoul-based analyst Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group [4] speculated that the North might be able to make quick progress toward a uranium bomb with help from Iran.
Links
[1] https://www.ploughshares.org/file/897
[2] http://www.fas.org
[3] http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090629_8510.php
[4] http://www.crisisgroup.org