North Korean leader Kim Jong Un tours a uranium enrichment facility in this photo issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in September 2024. (KCNA)
North Korea appears to be constructing a new building at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and continues to produce nuclear material in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, the head of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog said this week.
The structure shares similar “dimensions and features” with facilities at the North’s other major nuclear site in Kangson, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mariano Grossi told the agency’s board of governors in a statement Monday.
Grossi provided no further details about the new building but said the IAEA has collected “consistent” evidence that North Korea has reprocessed spent nuclear fuel at Yongbyon since at least late January.
“The undeclared enrichment facilities at both Kangson and Yongbyon are of serious concern,” he wrote, adding that the Punggye-ri test site in the northeast mountains remains capable of supporting another nuclear test — the country’s seventh.
The last confirmed nuclear test was conducted at the site on Sept. 3, 2017, triggering a 6.3-magnitude earthquake.
North Korea has been barred by multiple Security Council resolutions from conducting nuclear activity since 2006 but continues to develop its weapons program. The country is believed to have produced enough fissile material for up to 90 nuclear weapons and has assembled around 50 warheads, according to a U.S. Congressional Research Service report released in May.
Leader Kim Jong Un has repeatedly declared nuclear weapons essential to North Korea’s survival. In 2023, he amended the constitution to enshrine his nuclear vision. The following year, state-run media published photos of Kim inspecting centrifuges at an unidentified enrichment site.
IAEA inspectors have not been granted access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities since 2009.
In the 1990s, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for international assistance, but the agreement unraveled after Pyongyang admitted in 2002 that it had resumed uranium enrichment.
Stars and Stripes reporter Yoojin Lee contributed to this report.
