Could North Korea hit its neighbors with nukes?

Could North Korea hit its neighbors with nukes?

North Korea is widely recognized as being yearsaway from perfecting the technology to back up its bold threats of apre-emptive strike on the United States. But some nuclear experts say it mighthave the know-how to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at South Korea and Japan,which host U.S. military bases.

No one can tell with any certainty how much technologicalprogress North Korea has made, aside from perhaps a few people close to itssecretive leadership. And it is highly unlikely that Pyongyang would launchsuch an attack, because the retaliation would be devastating.

The North's third nuclear test on Feb. 12, which promptedthe toughest U.N. Security Council sanctions yet against Pyongyang, is presumedto have advanced its ability to miniaturize a nuclear device. And experts sayit's easier to design a nuclear warhead that works on a shorter-range missilethan one for an intercontinental missile that could target the U.S.

The assessment of David Albright at the Institute for Scienceand International Security think tank is that North Korea has the capability tomount a warhead on its Nodong missile, which has a range of 800 miles (1,280kilometers) and could hit South Korea and most of Japan. But he cautioned inhis analysis, published after the latest nuclear test, that it is an uncertainestimate, and the warhead's reliability remains unclear.

Albright contends that the experience of Pakistan couldserve as precedent. Pakistan bought the Nodong from North Korea after its firstflight test in 1993, then adapted and produced it for its own use. Pakistan,which conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, is said to have taken less than10 years to miniaturize a warhead before that test, Albright said.

North Korea also obtained technology from the traffickingnetwork of A.Q. Khan, a disgraced pioneer of Pakistan's nuclear program,acquiring centrifuges for enriching uranium. According to the CongressionalResearch Service, Khan may also have supplied a Chinese-origin nuclear weapon designhe provided to Libya and Iran, which could have helped the North in developinga warhead for a ballistic missile.

But Siegfried Hecker at Stanford University's Center forInternational Security and Cooperation, who has visited North Korea seven timesand been granted unusual access to its nuclear facilities, is skeptical theNorth has advanced that far in miniaturization of a nuclear device.

"Nobody outside of a small elite in North Korea knows —and even they don't know for sure," he said in an e-mailed response toquestions from The Associated Press. "I agree that we cannot rule it outfor one of their shorter-range missiles, but we simply don't know."

"Thanks to A.Q. Khan, they almost certainly havedesigns for such a device that could fit on some of their short or medium-rangemissiles," said Hecker, who last visited the North in November 2010."But it is a long way from having a design and having confidence that youcan put a warhead on a missile and have it survive the thermal and mechanicalstresses during launch and along its entire trajectory."

The differing opinions underscore a fundamental problem inassessing a country as isolated as North Korea, particularly its weaponsprograms: Solid proof is hard to come by.

For example, the international community remains largely inthe dark about the latest underground nuclear test. Although it caused amagnitude 5.1 tremor, no gases escaped, and experts say there was no way toevaluate whether a plutonium or uranium device was detonated. That informationwould help reveal whether North Korea has managed to produce highly enricheduranium, giving it a new source of fissile material, and help determine thetype and sophistication of the North's warhead design.

The guessing game about the North's nuclear weapons programdates back decades. Albright says that in the early 1990s, the CIA estimatedthat North Korea had a "first-generation" design for a plutoniumdevice that was likely to be deployed on the Nodong missile — although it's notclear what information that estimate was based on.

"Given that 20 years has passed since the deployment ofthe Nodong, an assessment that North Korea successfully developed a warheadable to be delivered by that missile is reasonable," Albright wrote.

According to Nick Hansen, a retired intelligence expert whoclosely monitors developments in the North's weapons programs, the Nodongmissile was first flight-tested in 1993. Pakistan claims to have re-engineeredthe missile and successfully tested it, although doubts apparently persistabout its reliability.

Whether North Korea has also figured out how to wed themissile with a nuclear warhead has major ramifications not just for South Koreaand Japan, but for the U.S. itself, which counts those nations as its principalallies in Asia and retains 80,000 troops in the two countries.

U.S. intelligence appears to have vacillated in itsassessments of North Korea's capabilities.

In April 2005, Lowell Jacoby, director of the DefenseIntelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Koreahad the capability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. Pentagon officials,however, later backtracked.

According to the Congressional Research Service, a reportfrom the same intelligence agency to Congress in August 2007 said that"North Korea has short and medium-range missiles that could be fitted withnuclear weapons, but we do not know whether it has in fact done so."

In an interview Friday in Germany, Gen. Martin Dempsey,chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. does not know whetherNorth Korea has "weaponized" its nuclear capability.

Still, Washington is taking North Korea's nuclear threatsseriously.

In December, North Korea launched a long-range rocket thatcould potentially hit the continental U.S. According to South Korean officials,North Korea has moved at least one missile with "considerable range"to its east coast — possibly the untested Musudan missile, believed to have arange of 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers).

This week, the U.S. said two of the Navy's missile-defenseships were positioned closer to the Korean peninsula, and a land-based systemis being deployed for the Pacific territory of Guam. The Pentagon last monthannounced longer-term plans to beef up its U.S.-based missile defenses.

South Korea is separated from North Korea and its hugestanding army by a heavily militarized frontier, and the countries remain in anofficial state of war, as the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.Even without nuclear arms, the North positions enough artillery within range ofSeoul to devastate large parts of the capital before the much-better-equippedU.S. and South Korea could fully respond.

And Japan has been starkly aware of the threat since NorthKorea's 1998 test of the medium-range Taepodong missile that overflew itsterritory.

Yet in the latest standoff, much of the internationalattention has been on the North's potential threat to the U.S., a more distantprospect than its capabilities to strike its own neighbors. Experts say theNorth could hit South Korea with chemical weapons, and might also be able touse a Scud missile to carry a nuclear warhead.

Darryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms ControlAssociation, acknowledges the North might be able to put a warhead on a Nodongmissile, but he sees it as unlikely. He says the North's nuclear threats areless worthy of attention than the prospects of a miscalculation leading to aconventional war.

"North Korea understands that a seriousattack on South Korea or other U.S. interests is going to be met withoverwhelming force," he said. "It would be near suicidal for theregime."

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