The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it is monitoring the construction of a new facility in North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex.  

In a statement released last week, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said the agency is "monitoring the construction of a new building at Yongbyon which has dimensions and features similar to the Kangson enrichment plant."

He said the "undeclared enrichment facilities" in North Korea "are of serious concern," adding that, "the continuation and further development of the DPRK's nuclear program are clear violations of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and are deeply regrettable."

'Paranoid about regime survival'

Analysts say that despite a functioning nuclear deterrent, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sees an even greater atomic weapons capability as critical to the survival of his regime.

"North Korea has long been paranoid about its regime survival," said Erwin Tan, a professor of international politics specializing in security dilemma theory at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

Kim has inherited his father's belief that an operational nuclear arsenal would serve as an "insurance policy," he added. "The current moment is also something of a 'window of opportunity' for the North Koreans to develop an operational nuclear arsenal, due to the policy naivete of President Donald Trump's administration and its lack of geostrategic foresight."

An analysis of satellite images published on June 13 by 38 North, a publication of the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center, supports the IAEA's assessment, including that the facility under construction is 120 meters long and 47 meters wide, almost identical to a plant at Kangson built to house high spin-rate centrifuges.

Other developments include the construction of what appears to be an underground radioactive waste storage facility, it said.

An expanding stockpile

The reports also coincide with a study published on Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that examined the state of the world's nuclear arsenals.

The institute estimated that North Korea "had assembled approximately 50 nuclear warheads and had sufficient fissile material to potentially produce up to 90 warheads" as of January this year. It added that Pyongyang's stockpile of nuclear warheads is "projected to expand in the coming years."

Andrei Lankov, a professor of history and international relations at Seoul's Kookmin University, said the North could be following one of two trajectories; one optimistic in terms of greater regional security and the other pessimistic.

"A decade ago, the North reached the level of technical capability to deploy both nuclear warheads and the ICBMs required to deliver them," he said. "They did not, however, halt their development work and now they have reached the point where they can deliver a warhead anywhere in the world."

The "implied scenario," Lankov said, is for the North to menace the US by threatening to attack its cities with nuclear weapons if it interferes with an invasion of South Korea. The North could then use tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to "overcome the massive superiority that South Korea holds in conventional weapons systems."

"The result would likely be a North Korean victory over the South," he added.

The more optimistic reading of the present situation, Lankov suggested, would be that the North is constructing new facilities "in plain sight" at Yongbyon to send a very different signal.

"This could be a very good sign that they are building this in full knowledge that it will be seen and understood as a sign that Pyongyang wants to negotiate."

Regional proliferation concerns

Professor Tan said Kim's security alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin has certainly given him additional power to resist international pressures, although there are tensions between the two sides.

"Russia and North Korea — and, for that matter, China — all distrust and dislike each other, but all of them also recognize that they have shared interests in opposing the US," he said.

"Kim Jong Un has apparently calculated that he can 'piggy-back' on his cooperation with Putin to rely on Russian military protection to undertake further development of his nuclear arsenal.”

This raises once again the specter of nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia including, potentially, South Korea developing and deploying its own nuclear deterrent.

"Towards the end of Trump's first term in office, there already were discussions in South Korea about an independent nuclear arsenal, but these did not materialize," he said.  

"My impression is that whilst members of the public in South Korea might have a knee-jerk response that is in favor of a nuclear arsenal, such willingness diminishes when they become aware of the level of increased taxation and defense spending, along with the prospective international fallout for the South's international reputation," he concluded.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru