Thread: China claims Kim Jong Un has agreed to denuclearize Korean Peninsula

China claims Kim Jong Un has agreed to denuclearize Korean Peninsula

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China from Sunday to Wednesday on an unofficial visit, according to China's state news agency Xinhua.

The visit was Kim's first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011.

Analysts believe the visit was to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.

Published 6 Hours Ago Updated 4 Hours Ago Reuters

China said on Wednesday it won a pledge from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean peninsula during a meeting with President Xi Jinping, who pledged in return that China would uphold its friendship with its isolated neighbor.

After two days of speculation, China announced on Wednesday that Kim had visited Beijing and met Xi during what the official Xinhua news agency called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday.

The trip was Kim's first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.

Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive North Korea, but ties have been frayed by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and China's backing of tough U.N. sanctions in response.

Xinhua cited Kim as telling Xi that the situation on the Korean peninsula is starting to improve because North Korea has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.

"It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearisation on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il," Kim Jong Un said, according to Xinhua.

North Korea is willing to talk with the United States and hold a summit between the two countries, he said.

"The issue of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace," Kim said.

Chinese state news outlets had photos of Xi and Kim together.

Xi told Kim in return that both sides had stated repeatedly that their traditional friendship should be passed on and developed better.

"This is a strategic choice and the only right choice both sides have made based on history and reality, the international and regional structure and the general situation of China-North Korea ties. This should not and will not change because of any single event at a particular time," Xi said.

Speculation about a possible visit by Kim to Beijing was rife earlier this week after a train similar to the one used by Kim's father was seen in the Chinese capital, along with heavy security and a large motorcade.

Kim was accompanied by his wife, Ri Sol Ju, Xinhua said.

Xi had accepted an invitation from Kim to visit North Korea, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

Improving ties between North Korea and China would be a positive sign before planned summits involving the two Koreas and the United States, a senior South Korean official said on Tuesday.

In response to the Chinese government's announcement of Kim's visit, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, "The Chinese government contacted the White House earlier on Tuesday to brief us on Kim Jong Un's visit to Beijing. The briefing included a personal message from President Xi to President Trump, which has been conveyed to President Trump."

Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, met then-president Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year. That visit was seen at the time as reaffirmation of close ties with Beijing.

—CNBC.com contributed to this report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/nort...ate-media.html

Sounds like things are moving forward on positive notes. Kim met with South Korea, all good, now China, with a great report. I so hope this works out for a true denuking of North Korea and a new positive relationship with the little hermit country.

Kim Jong Un meets with Chinese leader on 'unofficial visit,' state media says

By Samuel Chamberlain | Fox News
6 hours ago

China, North Korea confirm Kim Jong Un's visit to Beijing

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on an "unofficial visit" to Beijing, China's state-run media reported late Tuesday.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, citing North Korean state radio, reported that Kim had visited China between Sunday and Wednesday local time at Xi's invitation and was accompanied by his wife, Ri Sol Ju.

Xi held talks with Kim at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and he and his wife Peng Liyuan hosted a banquet for Kim and his wife, the official Xinhua news agency said. They also watched an art performance together, the news agency said.

Xi hailed Kim's visit as embodying the importance with which the North Korean leader regarded ties with China.

"We speak highly of this visit," Xi told Kim, according to Xinhua.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said: "The Chinese government contacted the White House earlier on Tuesday to brief us on Kim Jong Un's visit to Beijing. The briefing included a personal message from President Xi to President Trump, which has been conveyed to President Trump.

Republican senator from South Carolina tells Martha MaCallum on 'The Story' that president's leadership could lead to real breakthroughs on previously intransigent issues.

"The United States remains in close contact with our allies South Korea and Japan," Sanders added. "We see this development as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea."

Kim was described by Xinhua as saying that his country wants to transform ties with South Korea into "a relationship of reconciliation and cooperation." The two Koreas are still technically at war because their 1950-53 war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency published Kim's personal letter to Xi dated on Wednesday, where he expressed gratitude to the Chinese leadership for showing what he described as "heartwarming hospitality" during his "productive" visit.

Kim said that the first meeting between the leaders of the two countries will provide a "groundbreaking milestone" in developing mutual relations to "meet the demands of the new era." Kim also said that he's satisfied that the leaders confirmed their "unified opinions" on mutual issues.

In a speech at a banquet in China, Kim described the traditional allies as inseparable "neighboring brothers" with a relationship molded by a "scared mutual fight" to achieve socialist ideals, according to KCNA.

"It's most proper that my first overseas trip would be the capital of the People's Republic of China as it's also one of my noble duties to value the North Korea-China friendship as I do my own life and extend it (for another generation)," said Kim, according to the agency.

The North Korean leader is expected to hold separate summits with South Korean President Moon Jae In in late April and U.S. President Donald Trump in May. Analysts say Kim would have felt a need to consult with his country's traditional ally ahead of his planned meetings.

China remains North Korea's only major ally and chief provider of energy, aid and trade that keep the country's broken economy afloat.

The North's diplomatic outreach to Seoul and Washington came after an unusually provocative year when it conducted its most powerful nuclear test to date and three ICBMs tests designed to target the U.S. mainland.

The developments were interpreted as the North being desperate to break out of isolation and improve its economy after being squeezed by heavy sanctions.

Fox News' Katherine Lam and Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03...edia-says.html

North Korea Is Firing Up a Reactor That Could Upset Trump’s Talks With Kim.

By K.K. REBECCA LAI, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER MARCH 27, 2018

If President Trump actually meets Kim Jong-un in the next few months — an encounter that many American officials still doubt will come to pass — his challenge will be much larger than merely persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump must also get Pyongyang to give up the factories, reactors and nuclear-enrichment facilities that produce the nuclear fuel needed to build more weapons — even as new satellite evidence suggests that North Korea is expanding its production.

Feb. 25, 2018


Main New reactor

ElecImage from DigitalGlobe via Jane’s Intelligence Review

The satellite image above shows a new North Korean reactor that appears to be coming online now, after years of construction, according to analysts. It sits in the Yongbyon nuclear complex, where the North began its nuclear program in the 1960s. Today, the site boasts hundreds of buildings that lie along a loop of the Kuryong River and cover an area of more than three square miles.

North Korea insists the reactor is intended to produce electricity for civilian use. But the new reactor can also make plutonium, one of the main fuels used in nuclear arms. It can thus supplement the output of the aging, existing facilities at Yongbyon.

Making bomb fuel in reactors is seen as easier to do than perfecting missiles that can hurl nuclear arms around the globe. While experts clash over how soon the North will develop warheads that can survive the blistering heats of re-entry, they agree that the North has already mastered the art of using reactors to make plutonium.

Factoring in Nuclear Fuel

The new reactor could be a central issue in the Trump-Kim talks, if the goal, as the United States insists, is complete denuclearization. Even if Mr. Kim agrees to a freeze on nuclear and missile testing, he would still be able to accumulate more bomb fuel for a larger arsenal as long as the negotiations dragged on.

This was a critical issue in the Iran negotiations, where President Barack Obama negotiated a freeze on new production of significant quantities of new nuclear fuel, though it expires in 13 years. It is unclear whether Mr. Trump could extract a similar halt in production from North Korea.

But if the talks fail, or simply drag on, the reactor could also be part of the justification for military action — at least if the past arguments of Mr. Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, John R. Bolton, prevail. In March 2015, just before the Iran deal was struck, Mr. Bolton argued in a New York Times op-ed that neither negotiations nor sanctions would stop Iran from bolstering its nuclear and weapons programs. He has since made similar arguments about North Korea.

“The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required,” Mr. Bolton wrote. “Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”

Before and after the announcement of Mr. Bolton’s appointment last week, the National Security Council did not respond to several requests for comment on the evidence that North Korea’s new reactor is being started up. Mr. Bolton assumes his new role on April 9.

An Increase in Activity

The image of the North Korean reactor above, from Feb. 25, shows what look like emissions from a smokestack. That suggests that preliminary testing may have begun at the new reactor, according to a report by Jane’s Intelligence Review and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. The plant is called the experimental light water reactor.

It has the potential to make 25 to 30 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a small town. The plant could also potentially produce about 20 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium each year, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear weapons.

This would be more than four times the amount made annually by the North’s only other large reactor, which has long supplied the country with plutonium for its nuclear arsenal.

Imagery analysts at Stanford found that activity around the new reactor increased significantly in 2017, suggesting that the North has been rushing toward its full operation.

March 14, 2017

New reactor

Personnel on pathway

April 22, 2017

vehicle and objects at reactor entrance

May 3, 2017

Personnel, equipment and vehicles at reactor entrance

May 24, 2017

N

Vehicle and objects
at reactor entrance

Aug. 26, 2017 Shadow of crane

Tower crane at reactor entrance
Throughout 2017, analysts observed what appeared to be major work to complete a river cooling system, shown below, for the new reactor.

Nov. 26, 2017
N

Existing
reactor

New
reactor

Transport road

Small dam
for reactor’s
water intake

Cistern

Possible hot water
discharge line

Cold water
intake channels

River cooling system
for new reactor

Embankment

Kuryong
River



Image from Airbus DS via Jane’s Intelligence Review


Analysts also found some evidence that could support North Korea’s assertion that the new reactor would be used for power generation. Satellite images appeared to show that power lines and a transmission tower had been erected around the site.

“There are a number of objects that have been put in place that lead me and a number of experts to the conclusion that this might be used for production of electricity,” said Allison Puccioni of the Stanford team. She cautioned against assuming that North Korea sees the reactor as a way to make more fuel for nuclear weapons.

But the potential is there, and the North long ago banned international inspectors who carefully monitor what happens to the plutonium in used reactor fuel.

Oct. 28, 2017
N

Existing
reactor

New reactor

Power
transmission
tower

Kuryong
River

Power line



Image from Airbus DS via Jane’s Intelligence Review


A History of Nuclear Development
and Talks of Denuclearization


North Korea first began operating a nuclear reactor in the 1980s at Yongbyon, according to declassified C.I.A. documents and a report by Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico who has visited the Yongbyon complex multiple times. The image below highlights not only the two reactors but the plutonium reprocessing plant, where the North mines spent reactor fuel for the precious radioactive metal that can power nuclear arms.

Jan. 17, 2018
Existing reactor

New reactor

Kuryong River

YONGBYON

Plutonium
reprocessing
facility

Fuel-fabrication and
uranium-enrichment
facilities

Image from DigitalGlobe via Institute for Science and International Security


In 1986, North Korea began operating the five-megawatt reactor, which some analysts say has produced the nation’s entire supply of plutonium.

A 60-foot cooling tower, which carries waste heat away from the old reactor by emitting steam, was one of the most visible parts of the nuclear fuel operations at Yongbyon.

N

March 9, 2003

Existing
reactor

Smoke from
cooling tower

Dredging

Dredging activity
in river

Oct. 24, 2003

Smoke from
cooling tower

Dredging activity
in river

April 1, 2004

Smoke from
cooling tower

Dredging activity
in river

Feb. 17, 2007

Smoke from
cooling tower

Dredging activity
in river




Image from DigitalGlobe via Google Earth


After six-nation nuclear talks in 2007, North Korea agreed to shut down all facilities at the sprawling Yongbyon complex, and in 2008, the 60-foot cooling tower, one of the most visible reactor structures, was demolished. Video of the event was broadcast around the world.




“As a gesture of good faith,” said Ms. Puccioni, “they destroyed the cooling tower, ostensibly to show the world that they are no longer going to use the five-megawatt reactor.”

In truth, the destruction of the cooling tower was mostly a symbolic step that did little to undo the vast enterprise at Yongbyon.

In 2010, satellite imagery showed signs that the North was beginning construction of a new reactor.

Sept. 25, 2010

N

N

Construction began for
new reactor

New roads

Oct. 14, 2010

More signs of construction

April 10, 2011

Additional structures

Footpint of
reactor dome

May 27, 2011

Buildings completed

Footprint of
reactor dome

Additonal
structure

Piping

Sept. 5, 2012

Reactor dome
completed

Building
completed

March 10, 2013

Construction appears
completed

A new fence
or wall




Image from DigitalGlobe via Google Earth


By 2013, the exterior of the new reactor appeared to be completed, and activity around it was relatively stagnant after that, according to the Stanford group.

Dr. Hecker, with two other nuclear engineering experts, wrote in the Korea Observer in 2016 that North Korea was still developing the technology needed to start the reactor.

Over roughly the same period, the country began taking steps to get its old reactor running again, despite earlier promises to abandon the plant.

In 2013, satellite images revealed a new trench connecting the reactor to the Kuryong River. It would become part of a new cooling system to replace the destroyed cooling tower. After that, analysts observed periodic discharges of hot water from the reactor into the river.

May 15, 2013

N

Existing
reactor

Possible trench
for hot water
discharge

Dredging
activity
in river

Oct. 1, 2013

Water discharge
suggests activity
at the reactor

Dredging
activity
in river

Jan. 11, 2014

Water discharge
from reactor

Dredging
activity
in river

March 25, 2014

Possible trenches
for new reactor

Water discharge
from reactor




Image from DigitalGlobe via Google Earth


In a satellite image from Jan. 17, 2018, steam is visible from the existing five-megawatt reactor’s turbine building, and hot water appears to be melting snow at a discharge pipe. The evidence suggests that the reactor could again be in active use.

“The five-megawatt reactor has been in continuous operation more or less for the entirety of 2017,” said Ms. Puccioni, who has been studying satellite imagery of Yongbyon for almost a decade.

Jan. 17, 2018
N

Existing reactor

New reactor

Steam from reactor turbine building

Power
transmission
tower

Small dam
built for reactor’s
water intake

Hot water
discharge

Kuryong River

Image from DigitalGlobe via Institute for Science and International Security


The development and operation of the two reactors at the Yongbyon site threatens to complicate any talks on a freeze of the North’s activities, and on the ultimate goal of denuclearization.

Yet the issue is not insurmountable. The usual approach is to rely on inspectors who ensure that no spent reactor fuel gets mined for plutonium. The International Atomic Energy Agency did so before at Yongbyon, before its inspectors were expelled, and could surely do so again.

Trump administration officials say the denuclearization inspections, however, would have to cover the entire country, because there are suspected undeclared uranium enrichment facilities outside of Yongbyon.

Private analysts say they plan to keep monitoring Yongbyon for clues about when the new reactor becomes fully operational and if it is, in fact, producing new fuel for the North’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...T.nav=top-news