What do we know about North Koreas nuclear weapons programme?
North Korea claims to be working on building up its nuclear weapons arsenal but this is hard to verify. Most arms control experts suspect North Korea did pursue an active weapons programme – certainly up to 1994, when it signed a landmark agreement to freeze all nuclear-related activities. US officials have put the number at “one or two”. About 8,000 spent fuel rods that were put into storage in 1994 could also be used to extract enough weapons-grade plutonium for a handful more weapons, the US believes. North Korea has said it has already finished reprocessing these fuel rods, although South Korean and US intelligence are unsure whether to believe that claim. Other estimates say the North may now have eight or more bombs. Could North Korea now drop a nuclear bomb? Security analysts do not believe it has managed to make a device small enough to deliver on a missile, suggesting its only way of dropping a bomb would be via aircraft, which the US and its allies would be able to monitor. H
