North Korea

North Korea has a nuclear program which began after 1970 and was "frozen" in 1994 under the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework. This agreement began to break down in late 2002, when North Korea was accused of operating a uranium enrichment program. A new agreement has not been reached. North Korea may now have reprocessed enough plutonium for up to nine nuclear weapons.

Suspected Military Stocks of Fissile Material, end of 2003 (in kilograms)1,2
Unirradiated Plutonium15-40
Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)?
Number of Weapons2-9

ISIS publications relating to North Korea can be found here.


1 From Global Fissile Material Inventories, June 2004.
2 Because of the difficulty of estimating North Korea's plutonium stock, only a range is provided. North Korea has separated plutonium during two periods. It may have separated up to about 10 kilograms of plutonium prior to 1993. North Korea has stated that during the first half of 2003 it separated all the plutonium in a stock of fuel irradiated prior to mid-1994. Most experts accept that North Korea has separated a significant amount of plutonium from this irradiated fuel, but questions remain about whether North Korea separated all or the bulk of the plutonium in this fuel. The amount separated from this spent fuel is therefore preliminarily estimated to be between 15 and 30 kilograms of plutonium. In total, North Korea has an estimated 15-40 kilograms of separated plutonium. North Korea may have used gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. Available information suggests that little, if any, HEU has been produced in this program, but a great deal of uncertainty surrounds this issue.
[World Map][Text-only version][Summary Table]