I’m glad her recent “GSN piece”:http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090529_3404.php about North Korea linked to “this post”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2023/surprise-intel-failure by Josh, but she didn’t have to refer to this site, humble though it may be, as “a second blog.” Just saying.
Some seem to think that the name of this blog might not be family friendly, but I think they have dirty minds.
This post does not reflect the views of any part of any government.
Josh adds: The possibility, however slight, that this post reflects the views of the Dept. of Parks and Recreation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, should not be overlooked.
I was certainly flattered by the high-profile attention. So much so that I started hearing this song, playing in my head.
I overlooked something important “earlier”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2021/what-to-expect-from-north-korea when discussing what the U.S. government knew about North Korea’s nuclear test preparations and when they knew it:
bq. There are two possibilities. Either A) the Obama Administration saw some advantage to keeping mum, and turns out to be awfully good at keeping mum, or B) someone missed something they should not have missed.
There is an option C) as well: the intel collectors saw all the signs, but the higher-ups failed to draw the proper conclusions.
There was a scattering of leaks in the days ahead of the test, possibly from South Korean intelligence. And afterward, we “learned that the IC was watching the preparations intently”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-military-test26-2009may26,0,7128683.story:
bq. The official said that U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring the test facility had witnessed significant activity in the days before the explosion. The United States had positioned an array of high-tech equipment to monitor the test, including Pentagon aircraft equipped to collect atmospheric samples of any nuclear plume.
I believe it. But the Administration took none of the public steps one would expect to happen in advance of a test, not so much to deter the North Koreans as to build international support for a response after the fact. That led some observers to conclude that the timing of the test came as a surprise. “Marcus Noland”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/asia/27nuke.html, for example:
bq. “As much as they understood this was going to be an issue, they weren’t ready for a nuclear test in May,” Marcus Noland, an expert on North Korea at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said of Mr. Obama and his advisers. “They’re in a situation now where they have to contain and manage a crisis.”
As “noted previously”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2021/what-to-expect-from-north-korea, there appears to have been a firm and widely held conviction that North Korea would not test again until it had more plutonium in hand. Potential indications of an imminent test may have been discounted on that basis.
One possible result: the U.S. apparently “did not inform anyone in Japan”:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090527TDY01302.htm that a test was imminent. Whoops.
For just a moment, let’s turn this blog over to the learned Prof. “Richard Betts”:http://books.google.com/books?id=fNyLbIOH1akC, ca. 1982:
bq. The principal cause of surprise is not the failure of intelligence but the unwillingness of political leaders to believe intelligence or to react to it with sufficient dispatch.
You see, it pays to be mindful of the classics.
X-posted to “ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2321/surprise-intel-failure. See the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2321/surprise-intel-failure#comment.
A good place to start might be the “Foreign Ministry statement of April 29”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200904/news29/20090429-14ee.html:
In case the UNSC does not make an immediate apology [for the presidential statement condemning the launch of the Unha-2], such actions will be taken as:
Firstly, the DPRK will be compelled to take additional self-defensive measures in order to defend its supreme interests.
The measures will include *nuclear tests* and *test-firings of intercontinental ballistic missiles.*
Secondly, the DPRK will make a decision to build a light water reactor power plant and start the *technological development for ensuring self-production of nuclear fuel* as its first process without delay.
Emphasis added.
We are now at one nuclear test and counting.
-(Why)- Did It Come as a Surprise?
In light of the foregoing statement, today’s test cannot have come as a surprise to anyone. But “people who follow this subject intently”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2020/lankov-times-the-market were taken aback by how soon it happened. One would assume that the preparations were in motion even before April 29, yet we saw nothing in the papers about it. That’s awfully interesting, since the last time a nuclear test was announced to the world as a _fait accompli_ — I’m relying on memory here, so please correct me if I’m wrong — was the first of India’s two rounds of testing in 1998, widely considered in the United States to have been an intelligence failure.
There are two possibilities. Either A) the Obama Administration saw some advantage to keeping mum, and turns out to be awfully good at keeping mum, or B) someone missed something they should not have missed. If it’s the latter, the results may be no more than mildly embarrassing, but it’s still a little disconcerting.
Update: Chosun Ilbo “reports”:http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/05/26/2009052600715.html that the U.S. and South Korea were keeping a weather eye on the test site. But it’s not clear that they had good indications on timing.
Further update: Thanks to the contributions of readers “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2020/lankov-times-the-market#comment and “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2313/what-to-expect-from-north-korea#comment, it’s clear that Option A, above, is the correct answer. There were a few leaks, but nothing that the community of wonks picked up on the time. Perhaps Option B applies to us. We’ll have to do better, next time.
I had not seen it widely discussed, but would venture that the tacit consensus, “expressed earlier by Sig Hecker”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1996/north-koreas-reprocessing-option, was that North Korea was unlikely to test again before completing a reprocessing campaign. Perhaps not, after all.
Now might be a good time to revisit what North Korea is doing on ICBMs and the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle.
“Cross-posted to ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2313/what-to-expect-from-north-korea. See the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2313/what-to-expect-from-north-korea#comment.
The _Post_ quotes Andrei Lankov on the timing of “North Korea’s second nuclear test”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052500297_pf.html:
bq. “This is absolutely predictable, even though I thought they would do it later, allowing some time for tension to mount,” said Andrei Lankov, a Seoul-based expert on North Korea who teaches at Kookmin University. “This is part of their usual blackmail tactics, aimed at squeezing more concessions from the United States.”
As Lankov says, that North would take the present opportunity to test a nuclear device is not surprising. They’ve told us as much. That the test comes so soon after the diplomatic breakdown, this time around, is perhaps a bit different, but maybe not so much. Consider: the last time we went through this drill, back in 2006, there was an early-July-to-early-October gap between the (not so) big missile launch and the (not so) big bang underground. This time, we’ve only had to wait from early April to late May. It’s a bit more than a month’s difference, then, if one measures from weapons test to weapons test, rather than from the announcement blowing off the 6PT to the first weapons test.
Anyway, the real surprise is, there were no media leaks about activity at the test site. If there were any, I missed them.
Update: Andrei Lankov is probably the top Anglophone expert on North Korea. I’m not trying to pick on him, or anyone in particular, really. Everyone expected a North Korean nuclear test this year; nobody expected it today.
Further update: If it seems that I’ve underplayed my intended point here, it’s because I’m reluctant to cast aspersions on the hard work of the intelligence community, especially with an argument from silence. Not everything that gets noticed necessarily gets leaked out. But it does seem odd that we heard nothing in the days before the test. The Administration had no interest in appearing to be caught off-guard.
I’ve tweaked the title of this blog entry and the first paragraph, so as not to distract from the intended point.
On A Related Note
Some believe that North Korea’s July 5, 2006 missile tests were timed to the 4th of July holiday here in the U.S. This “some” has never included yours truly: if that was the name of the game, why wait until late in the day of the 4th in the U.S.? Why not seize the morning headlines? To me, it always seemed more interesting that the fireworks display, including the failed TD-2 test, started right after a space shuttle launch. But seeing as it’s Memorial Day today, perhaps there _was_ something to that line of thinking after all. Or perhaps the North Koreans noticed the extra goose they got out of us, and did purposefully today what they did incidentally then.
-It’s too early to say. But at first glance,- it’s already starting to look like Russia vs. the rest on the yield of “North Korea’s second nuclear test”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/world/asia/26nuke.html:
Kim Sung-han, a security expert at Korea University in Seoul, estimated the test had a power of one kiloton of explosives, slightly more than the 0.8 kiloton detonation reported in 2006. If correct, that would be a fraction of the size of the blasts from American bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945 — themselves considered small by current standards.
But Alexander Drobyshevsky, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, told RIA-Novosti news agency offered a different estimate, saying that the force of the blast was 10 to 20 kilotons.
We’ve “been here before”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1971/russia-eyes-north-korea. Why?
Update: “Martin Kalinowski”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/file_download/22/Kalinowski.pdf of Universität Hamburg has a higher estimate than does Kim Sung-han, but he’s still well south of the numbers given by the Russian Ministry of Defense:
bq. Several seismic observatories all over the world recorded an event that took place in the North East of the country. The U.S. Geological Survey determined the event time as 00:54:43 UTC. The location is close to the first nuclear test. The seismic body wave magnitude of 4.7 is larger as compared to the value of 4.1±0.1 in 2006. According to the assessment of Martin Kalinowski, this corresponds to an explosive yield of about 3 to 8 kilotons TNT equivalent with a most likely yield of 4 kt TNT. In 2006 the yield was unexpectedly low with an estimate of 0.5 to 0.8 kt TNT.
I’ll add more as it pops up, time permitting.
Later update: As usual, all the action is at ACW. Jeff has located “three estimates”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2310/north-korean-nuclear-test-mb via the “International Seismological Centre’s Online Bulletin”:http://snipr.com/iqcx1. They cluster around 2 to 6 kt. Notably, the result from the Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences is basically in line with the others, and *not* with the announcement of the Ministry of Defense, which appears to float free of all observed data.
For whatever it’s worth, Kim Sung-han’s estimate — as reported in the NY Times and cited above — is also an outlier, but in the other direction.
Geoff has some thoughts about the “potential implications”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2311/north-koreas-design-choices of a ~4kt test for weaponization.
Andreas says it took place at a “second test site”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2312/greetings-from-geneva-more-on-mb-to-yield, not far from the first.
A “short while ago”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2001/hibbs-on-syria-u-traces, we all learned some new stuff from Mark Hibbs about the uranium oxide particles found in Syria. Long story short, the IAEA has reason to believe they were uranium metal “converted” into oxide by… “some event”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1038934.html that divided the uranium into fine particles, causing it to scatter and oxidize.
Now let’s go further and assume that this uranium was, prior to its untimely fine division, fuel for a Yongbyon-type Magnox reactor. This raises an obvious question: Where did it come from?
Well, I think we can rule out “Lancashire”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1865/more-than-you-wanted-to-know-about-magnox. Instinctively, most of us would say, it came from the Yongbyon fuel fabrication complex in North Korea. It might also have come from a duplicate facility in Syria, although this assumes that quite a lot of stuff could have been built, supplied, and operated undetected.
Ask Dr. Science
The natural place to start is with “SIGINT”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1866/just-a-little-bit-more-information. In February 2008, according to Dr. Siegfried “Sig” Hecker, North Korea had under a quarter of a load of fuel rods — apparently for the infamous 5 MWe reactor that has produced all or essentially all of North Korea’s plutonium — and a full load of uncladded fuel rods for the unfinished 50 MWe reactor.
Is that everything that was supposed to be there? As it turns out, Hibbs has already looked into this question. He asked Hecker and wrote up his answer in the Dec. 18, 2008 issue of _Nucleonics Week_.
None of the safeguarded fresh uranium fuel produced by North Korea at its Yongbyon nuclear research center for two of its own reactors was diverted to an alleged clandestine reactor project in Syria, a US expert said December 15.
Siegfried Hecker, a director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an interview that the fuel, which had been declared to the IAEA, was still at the center when he visited it in February.
OK. So what about the period after the collapse of the Agreed Framework and before the return of inspectors? Is it possible that the complex was put back into operation, making more fuel?
Let’s go back to Hecker’s “Feb. 2008 trip report”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1866/just-a-little-bit-more-information:
bq. The front end of fuel fabrication (Building 1) had been operating making uranium dioxide (UO2) from uranium ore concentrate right up to the time the facility was shut down on July 15, 2007. The back end was operational with seven conversion furnaces, two casting furnaces, and eight machining lathes. However, the middle part, the fluorination facility, had deteriorated so badly during the freeze (1994 to 2003) that the building has been abandoned (as we were shown in August 2007). However, the DPRK had recently completed alternate fluorination equipment (using dry rather than wet techniques) in one of the ancillary buildings. However, this was a makeshift operation that has limited throughput potential. It was not put into full operation by the time of the shutdown on July 15.
It sounds as if A) the complex had only limited capacity during the dark period between 2002 and 2007, but B) the North Koreans were operating some (perhaps all) of the parts that worked, and C) they made efforts to reconstitute what wasn’t working (fluorination) on an _ad hoc_ basis. This element was not “put into full operation,” but that doesn’t mean that it produced nothing, either.
How much fresh fuel could these arrangements have created? Enough for the “test assembly” that one of Hibbs’s sources suggests Syria might have had at the reactor? It’s not really clear, but seems possible. Either way, it raises the question of where the Syrians expected to get a full load of fresh fuel in 2007, when Yongbyon was once again under safeguards. And no, I’m not even going to start speculating about reprocessing facilities.
Anybody Around Here Read Korean?
One way to know what happened at Yongbyon during the dark years would be to scrutinize the operating records of the fuel fabrication complex. There are forensic tests to establish the genuineness of such documents. But according to (you guessed it!) Mark Hibbs in the Jan. 12, 2009 issue of _NuclearFuel,_ these records were not among those provided by North Korea to the United States.
All together now: _Hmmmm._
So, it’s an open question. Any enterprising journalists out there want to take a stab at this one?
Just for fun: Hibbs quotes a “senior UN official” in the Feb. 23, 2009 issue of _NuclearFuel_ as saying that the particles “looked like UO2,” not other oxides. Also, a “Western safeguards official” said that — along with uranium oxide and graphite — there was lots of aluminum and magnesium in the IAEA samples from al-Kibar. That’s what Magnox fuel cladding is made of. But it might have come from the soil, too, right?
One thing is clear, at least: the Syrians won’t be letting the IAEA back in anytime soon.
After all that, you deserve a “musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xmSYS2uM0. Knock yourself out.
This could be a really good post with a lot of depth, but I am busy. However, Josh’s productivity is making me feel guilty enough to post something brief.
First, though, a thank-you to Nathan Hodge who was kind enough to “mention me”:http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/04/north-korea-fue.html#more a little while back. As he noted, I took issue with one phrase in his original post: “once you have mastered satellite launch, you’ve pretty much figured out how to build an ICBM.”
I told him that mastering a satellite launch
bq. helps with the “launch” part, but not the “re-enter the atmosphere and destroy the desired target” part.
This is simply because SLVs aren’t designed to do the “blow up a lot of shit” thing that ICBMs tend to be good for. If you can build such things, that is. It’s not easy – a fact that “this piece in Yonhap”:http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2009/04/05/2/0301000000AEN20090405005400315F.HTML discussed a few weeks ago.
I would also commend “this OTA report.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/file_download/7
Happy reading. And don’t even think about any unconscious motives behind your interest in missiles…
Josh adds: I’m not sure I’d call it “productivity,” exactly. And speaking for myself, at least, I’m still trying not to think too hard about my “interest in SBX”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1999/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-sbx.
If you believe what’s been written about the “Musudan IRBM”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1884/irbm, then the NKs have a big leg up on the re-entry vehicle problem already.
“Mark Landler in the NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/asia/15korea.html asked Sig Hecker for his view:
Siegfried S. Hecker, a professor at Stanford University who has extensively toured the plant, said it would take six months to rebuild the cooling tower that North Korea blew up in June 2008 as part of an earlier agreement.
But Dr. Hecker said the North Koreans could begin reprocessing plutonium from an existing cache in a couple of weeks. That would allow them to make at least one additional bomb, he said, which might embolden them to conduct another test and refine their bomb-making expertise.
“With Yongbyon disabled, it meant no more bombs and no better bombs,” Dr. Hecker said.
The North had earlier agreed in principle to give up its nuclear material and any weapons, but talks on how to reach that goal stalled. During the Bush administration, North Korea is believed to have produced enough bomb-grade plutonium for six or more nuclear weapons.
Dr. Hecker said that throwing out inspectors also raised the risk that North Korea could sell nuclear material to other countries.
The possibility of a second nuclear test -was mooted at least as early as last month- has been mooted “recently”:http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2009/03/26/62/0401000000AEN20090326007400315F.HTML.
Would it get the North Koreans anything? As mentioned above, it could help them to validate a bomb design. But would it soften up the U.S. or the neighbors? I doubt it.
This evening’s _Nelson Report_ has much discussion of today’s North Korea developments.
N.KOREA…you remember the song, “Oh, what a difference a day makes, 24 little hours…”
The N. Korean government today took steps which, taken literally, may be irrevocable…announcing, twice, it would “never” return to the 6 Party Talks.
That was followed with the official expulsion of IAEA inspectors from the Yongbyon nuclear complex.
“And furthermore” steps included repeating recent threats to fully re-start the Yongbyon fissile material production process…something the Bush folks hoped had been “disabled”, perhaps to the point of “dismantlement”.
Bear in mind the DPRK last month kicked out all international NGO’s, a move it presumably could more or less afford, most of the food needed for getting to the spring harvest having already been delivered.
And in a step not publicized, the N. Korean UN reps privately told US groups planing private trips North that everything’s on hold until further notice.
Add it all up and you can see a self-imposed isolation by the NK leadership.
And whatever ALL of this may reflect in terms of the “succession question”…one can speculate that Kim and his advisors assume the US reaction will be what it has been since the Bush Administration concluded IT’S “freeze option” was a dismal failure.
That is, the US will try to come up with sufficient “inducements”…a word which the Obama folks would like to ban from the lexicon…to bring Pyongyang back to the table.
As you will read, below, serious, pro-engagement adult supervisors like Amb. Jack Pritchard warn that now is NOT the time to jump at that option.
Which brings us back to “never”…
Obviously, NO ONE today has any kind of solid intel, much less solid analysis on the real situation in Pyongyang, and what the leadership there now intends.
But we have to tell you that just about ALL our Korea policy e-mail salon has concluded, collectively and separately, that today’s “never” may have fundamentally altered the equation, and that from today, it’s a new game, with rules we now must work with China, Japan and South Korea to figure out.
That’s just a sample. If you want more, you gotta subscribe.
Here’s the “IAEA statement”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2008/prn200813.html on North Korea’s latest move:
Press Release 2008/13
IAEA Removes Seals from Plant in Yongbyon
24 September 2008 | Following is a statement to the media by IAEA Spokesperson Melissa Fleming on the situation in the DPRK:
“As the Director General reported to the Board on Monday, the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea, the DPRK, asked the IAEA to remove seals and surveillance from the reprocessing plant in Yongbyon.
This work was completed today. There are no more IAEA seals and surveillance equipment in place at the reprocessing facility.
The DPRK has also informed the IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week´s time.
They further stated that from here on the IAEA inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant.”
OK, OK, here’s the “new IAEA statement”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2009/prn200903.html:
Press Release 2009/03
IAEA Inspectors Asked to Leave the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
2009-04-14 | Following is a statement to the media by IAEA Spokesperson Marc Vidricaire on the situation in the DPRK:
“The Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has today informed IAEA inspectors in the Yongbyon facility that it is immediately ceasing all cooperation with the IAEA. It has requested the removal of all containment and surveillance equipment, following which, IAEA inspectors will no longer be provided access to the facility. The inspectors have also been asked to leave the DPRK at the earliest possible time.
The DPRK also informed the IAEA that it has decided to reactivate all facilities and go ahead with the reprocessing of spent fuel.”
The consensus is already taking shape: North Korea has walked away from the 6PT and ain’t coming back. Maybe I’m overcorrecting, but I remember thinking the same thing last year, too.
Possibly there’s still hope, if not for the resumption of the 6PT, then for renewal of dialogue in some other form that keeps Yongbyon on ice. Both sides seem to have an interest in moving to a “bilateral format”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1947/batman-begins.
Still, things do look worse this time around, don’t they? It may be that KJI, post-stroke, has become preoccupied with regime solidarity, and is not interested in handing off a delicate diplomatic process to a neophyte successor.
If so, KJI is courting a very tough response from a U.S. that feels threatened by surplus plutonium, and the possibility that it might someday go further afield than North Korea.
