ROK Intelligence Believes North Korea Has Advanced Their Nuclear Weapons Technology

It is looking like the Kim regime is getting closer to being able to miniaturize their nuclear weapons capability to be able to fit on to a delivery system:

South Korea’s defence ministry said Tuesday that North Korea appeared to have achieved a “significant” level of technology to miniaturise a nuclear device to be fitted on the tip of a missile.

The ministry made the warning in a white paper due to be released later Tuesday, although defence officials said the nuclear-armed North has yet to demonstrate its miniaturisation capacity.

“North Korea’s capabilities of miniaturising nuclear weapons appear to have reached a significant level,” the ministry said in a statement.

Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests, most recently in February 2013.

The defence ministry said the North had probably secured some 40 kilos (88 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, and that it is working on a highly enriched uranium programme.

Pyongyang mothballed the five-megawatt reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it in mid-2013. The facility is the country’s main source of weapons grade plutonium.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but I would have to think they would first be focusing on miniaturizing the nuclear weapon to fit on a warhead that can be delivered via artillery to threaten South Korea with. Developing nuclear warheads for an intercontinental ballistic missile to threaten the US with is a far more complicated endeavor.