A SENIOR South Korean official has warned that North Korea's nuclear program had reached "a very alarming level".
This came a day after his country's Defence Minister warned of an imminent "provocation" from Pyongyang in the lead-up to the G20 forum in Seoul next month.
"North Korea's nuclear threat has progressed at a rapid pace and reached a very alarming level, while the nuclear programs are evolving even now," presidential aide Kim Tae-hyo told a forum yesterday.
Mr Kim, Lee Myung-bak's deputy national security adviser, said Pyongyang was believed to be operating all its nuclear programs, including the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which produces weapons-grade plutonium, and a separate enriched uranium plant designed to make bombs.
"If the nuclear warheads are made compact and deployed to the field, they could wreak immense havoc on South Korea regardless of their precision level," South Korea's JoongAng daily quoted him as saying.
The North closed down Yongbyon in 2007 under a six-nation disarmament deal, but announced it would restart operations at the complex after the UN Security Council condemned one of its missile tests.
The South Korean government said this week that construction of several buildings around the Yongbyon plant had begun recently.
Peter Beck, a specialist on North Korea from Tokyo's Keio University, said yesterday he believed a North Korean missile test, rather than a new nuclear test, was more likely.
However, another North Korea specialist, Hajime Izumi, said Pyongyang was unlikely to disrupt the G20. He said the North recognised that its nuclear tests now got little reaction from Japan and Korea.
Speaking at the Foreign Press Club of Japan, Professor Izumi said he doubted the North Koreans would attempt a missile test unless they had developed a missile capable of reaching the US, which he said they had not.
Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un, the newly confirmed heir apparent to power in North Korea, watched a live-fire military drill with his father, dictator Kim Jong-il, according to state-run media.
It was the first time Kim Jong-un has been officially noted with his father and comes a week after he picked up senior military and political appointments.
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