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* By Spencer Ackerman - Wired News
* December 9, 2010 | Just when you thought it was safe to take a dip in the West Sea, a
report from North Korean dissidents claims that Pyongyang has already
developed sea-borne nuclear weapons.
If you read Korean, you can find their report here, but if not, Bill
Gertz at the Washington Times has the gist. Citing a Pyongyang
government official, the defectors claim that in March 2009, North
Korean military units called �Thunder� and �Lightning� began technical
nuclear torpedo and mine research to blunt the superiority of U.S. and
South Korean naval weaponry. They claim that the �nuclear mines are
technologically at a stage of completion, and the plan [is] to finish
[developing] nuclear torpedoes by 2012.� North Korea is believed to have
fewer than ten nuclear bombs. Now the caveats. U.S. intelligence officials have yet to check out the
claim, Gertz reports, and Gertz�s reporting can be rather alarmist about
east-Asian threats. The North�s record at testing nuclear weapons is
spotty at best. Defectors have been known to inflate the threat from
their home regimes. According to the defectors, one of the reasons
Pyongyang wants the deep-sea nukes is to deter the U.S. from interfering
in a potential Korean war. But it hasn�t boasted about developing them �
even as U.S. warships recently drilled with the South Koreans after the
North�s artillery attack three weeks ago, and the top U.S. military
officer just left Kim Jong-il�s backyard on a trip to bolster the
anti-Nork coalition. Hard to see how the U.S. could be deterred by
something it doesn�t know about. Still, over at the U.S. Naval Institute�s blog, Raymond Pritchett
observes that a recent WikiLeaked cable cited a Chinese diplomat�s claim
that Pyongyang kept �critical information about secret underwater
nuclear facilities located on North Korea�s coast� hidden from Kim�s big
Chinese patron. (Although that cable is from 2008, from 2008, seemingly
before the supposed launch of the North�s nuke torpedo and mine program.) These weapons are familiar to the U.S. Starting in the 1960s, its subs
carried the Mark 45 and Mark 48 nuclear torpedoes, 19-foot-long weapons
designed to take out Soviet nuclear subs with 11-kiloton yields.
Moscow�s family of countermeasures, known as the Type 53-68 HWT, had
20-kiloton yields. Gertz notes that the Chinese navy has been intrigued
by nuclear torpedoes lately, leading him to collect this awesome quote
from defense wonk Richard Fisher: �China�s strategy is simply to have us
negotiate with North Korea and Iran until its nuclear weapons start to
kill us.� OK then. It�s possible we may get some clarity on the alleged nuclear
torpedo and mine programs. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a
frequent diplomatic backchannel to the North Koreans, is headed to
Pyongyang at �the invitation of key people in the nuclear crowd over
there,� according to the Washington Post Presumably they�ll want to talk
about the North�s recent declaration of a new uranium-enrichment
facility, but it�s the perfect opportunity to make additional nuclear
boasts.
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