VIENNA (Kyodo) — The International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Monday that North Korea has been building a new uranium enrichment facility.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told the board of governors the agency is monitoring the construction of a new building in Yongbyon in the country’s northwest that has similar features to an existing enrichment plant in Kangson near Pyongyang.
Expressing fresh concern over North Korea’s nuclear program, he said its continuation and further development in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions are “deeply regrettable.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toured a nuclear-material production base and the Nuclear Weapons Institute last September and in January, the country’s state-run media said earlier this year, without reporting the location of the sites.
In an unusual move, the official Korean Central News Agency has published pictures of many centrifuges at an undeclared facility visited by Kim.
In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday Pyongyang’s nuclear development is “totally unacceptable” as it threatens the peace and security of Japan as well as the international community.
The top government spokesman said Tokyo will work with the United States, South Korea and other countries to demand the complete abandonment of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
In 2010, Pyongyang gave U.S. nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker a tour of an existing uranium enrichment facility in Yongbyon that is believed capable of producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006.
IAEA suggests N. Korea building new uranium enrichment facility
