North Korea's Nuclear Weapons

North Korea, "The Hermit Kingdom", has been on the terrorism list since its alleged involvement in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner which killed 115 people.
Many governments remain deeply concerned about North Korea's human rights abuses, uranium enrichment activities, nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic missile programs and the threat it continues to pose to South Korea and its neighbors.

North Korean officials had turned over to China a 60-page declaration, written in English, that details several rounds of plutonium production at the Yongbyon plant dating back to 1986. In it, North Korea acknowledges producing roughly 40 kilograms of enriched plutonium -- enough for about seven nuclear bombs, according to the U.S. State Department.

Five nations -- the United States, South Korea, Russia, China and Japan -- are applying pressure on Pyongyang to get the secretive nation to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

In 27 June 2008, North Korea on destroyed a water cooling tower at a facility where officials acknowledge they extracted plutonium to build nuclear weapons, the massive implosion, at the Yongbyon facility, was intended to be a powerful public symbol of a move to end nuclear activities by the Communist nation once branded a member of an "axis of evil" by U.S. President George W. Bush. The destruction of the highly visible symbol of North Korea's long-secret nuclear program came just a day after the country released details of its program.
However, in 3 November 2009, North Korea has completed reprocessing thousands of spent fuel rods, producing plutonium which could be used in nuclear weapons.

They defended this move as a security for the country and the sovereignty of the nation as its life and soul was compelled to take measures for bolstering up its deterrent for self-defense to cope with the increasing nuclear threat and military provocations of the hostile forces.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, says North Korea poses more of a nuclear threat than Iran because it already has nuclear material that could go into a weapon. The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously to impose a wide set of sanctions on North Korea as punishment for the Asian nation's claimed nuclear weapons test. North Korea rejects the resolution and walks out of the security council chamber.

In 24 February 2003, North Korea test fires a land-to-ship missile into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. In July 2006, North Korea test-fires six missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 rocket believed capable of reaching western United States. Taepodong rocket fails after 40 seconds, but U.S. denounces tests as "provocative."

North Korea remains a threat to the world as it vows to strengthen its nuclear capabilities in defiance of the U.N. Security Council's move to tighten sanctions against it.