North Korea Images Spark Nuclear Fears

North Korea has again started work to expand a site believed to be a nuclear facility close to the country’s capital city, according to new analysis, as the secretive nation’s leadership becomes bolder in its nuclear rhetoric and tensions with its southern neighbor skyrocket.

A “new annex” is under construction at the Kangson site near Pyongyang, believed by some analysts to be a North Korean uranium enrichment site, according to NKPro, a project run by the U.S.-based NK News website.

The new area, which the outlet said was identified from satellite imagery, is just over a fifth of the size of the current main building, according to their analysis, adding it was built in the past month. Newsweek reached out to the Permanent Mission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations Office in Geneva via email for comment.

The Kangson site was identified as a likely uranium enrichment compound in 2018. The Diplomat reported at the time that U.S. intelligence had been monitoring this site for more than 10 years.

But a report published by North Korean analysts with 38 North in late 2020 suggested Kangson may not be a uranium enrichment site, but a facility manufacturing parts centrifuges. Centrifuges, however, can be used to enrich uranium and then used as nuclear fuel.

Satellite imagery previously suggested in 2021 that North Korea was expanding its uranium enrichment plant at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility complex, north of Pyongyang. This could be laying the groundwork to “increase production of nuclear materials for weapons production,” Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told CNN in September 2021.

Recent months have seen Pyongyang and its leader, Kim Jong Un, become more daring in nuclear saber-rattling as relations with South Korea frayed to their worst point in decades.

North Korea has shifted from an official policy of reconciliation with South Korea, declaring Seoul to be a sworn enemy. South Korea and Japan have expressed grave concerns about North Korea’s military activity, calling Pyongyang’s actions a severe threat to their national security and turning to the U.S. for support—something that has angered North Korea.

North Korea has said it is upping weapons production and test-fired a host of new weapons capable of carrying nuclear weapons, from an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to an “underwater nuclear weapons system” supposedly capable of unleashing a nuclear tsunami on North Korea’s adversaries. In September, North Korea said it had debuted its first “tactical nuclear attack submarine” able to carry and launch nuclear weapons.

There is some doubt among Western analysts about the submarine’s true capabilities, but North Korea has also launched a spy satellite and committed to putting several more into orbit this year.