WASHINGTON – North Korea has restarted production of plutonium fuel, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, showing that it plans to pursue its nuclear weapons programme in defiance of international sanctions.

The US assessment came a day after the UN nuclear watchdog said it had “indications” that Pyongyang has reactivated a plant to recover plutonium from spent reactor fuel at Yongbyon, its main nuclear complex.

The latest developments suggest North Korea’s reclusive communist government is working to ensure a steady supply of materials for its drive to build warheads, despite tightened international sanctions after its fourth nuclear test in January.

The US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Washington is worried by the new plutonium reprocessing effort, but he offered no explicit word on any US response.

A look at North Korea’s Kim Jong Un

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AFP, Reuters

“Everything in North Korea is a cause for concern,” the official told Reuters.

“They take the spent fuel from the 5 megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and let it cool and then take it to the reprocessing facility, and that’s where they’ve obtained the plutonium for their previous nuclear tests. So they are repeating that process,” the official said.

“That’s what they’re doing.”

Pyongyang vowed in 2013 to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main reactor and the smaller plant at Yongbyon, which was shut down in 2007 as part of an international disarmament-for-aid deal that later collapsed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has no access to North Korea and mainly monitors its activities by satellite, said last year it had seen signs of a resumption of activity at Yongbyon.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told a news conference in Vienna on Monday that there have been indications of renewed plutonium reprocessing activities at Yongbyon.

Reprocessing involves extracting plutonium from spent reactor fuel, one route to obtaining bomb fuel other than uranium enrichment.

“I would agree that there are indications,” the US official said.

The official declined to confirm whether this determination was made from satellite imagery or intelligence sources, or to say how much plutonium North Korea could produce by this method.

NUCLEAR PROGRAM SHROUDED IN SECRECY

While North Korea in the past has often obtained key components for its nuclear programme from other countries despite international sanctions, there was no sign of any recent outside procurement involved in reactivating its plutonium reprocessing, the official said.

There is little proven knowledge about the quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that North Korea possesses, or its ability to produce either, though plutonium from spent fuel at Yongbyon is widely believed to have been used in its nuclear bombs.

Experts at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington predicted last year that North Korea’s nuclear weapons stockpile could grow to 20, 50 or 100 bombs within five years, from an estimated 10 to 16 weapons at that time.

North Korea has come under tightening international pressure over its nuclear weapons programme, including tougher UN sanctions adopted in March backed by its lone major ally China, following its most recent nuclear blast and ballistic missile tests.

The website 38 North reported last week, based on commercial satellite imagery, that exhaust plumes had been detected twice in May from the thermal plant at Yongbyon’s Radiochemical Laboratory, the site’s main reprocessing installation.

The Institute for Science and International Security also reported exhaust emissions from a chimney at the plant, which it said was often associated with reprocessing activities there.

BEIJING – With a following of several million teenage fans, China’s Liu Jie says he can earn nearly US$50,000 (S$67,700) a month from his online videos and is even recognised on the street. But he is no pop star.

A high school physics tutor, Mr Liu belongs to a growing cohort of educators feeding the country’s insatiable demand for after-school online study.

The industry is fuelled by the vast number of Internet users in China – the most in the world – combined with the annual university entrance exam, a national obsession that decides the fate of millions.

The gruelling two-day “gaokao” begins today, with police set to cordon off streets to ensure silence for students.

“The gaokao is such a huge deal in China… that’s where the main demand is,” said Mr Liu, fresh from recording a lecture on static electricity.

Mr Liu was a private tutor before he began filming lessons for an online platform that sells them to hungry students.

“Students will often pursue a teacher like they pursue celebrities,” said Mr Liu.

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AFP

When he reached the limit of 5,000 friends on social media platform WeChat, he added another account which quickly gained 3,000 more.

The almost unlimited size of an online classroom means that top teachers can earn a fortune.

Mr Liu can rake in up to 300,000 yuan (S$61,800) a month ahead of the exam, generating an annual income of about 2.8 million yuan – more than thirty times the standard wage of a high school teacher in Beijing.

“I didn’t think I could make so much money,” he said. “Teaching has always been seen as a poor profession.”

China has long had the world’s largest number of Internet users – now more than 650 million – but the rise of smartphones has pushed online courses into the mainstream.

Reports of teachers making millions each year from such courses showed online teaching was “in the ascendent” said Xiong Bingqi, vice-president of independent think-tank 21st Century Education in Shanghai.

“Teachers earning more than other online celebrities shows their abilities and the choices of consumers,” he said.

Ahead of the gaokao, high-school students study from shortly after dawn to well beyond sunset.

In 2012, the nation was shocked when it emerged that one school had provided students with intravenous drips of amino acids to give them strength to continue working.

Cao Wei, an online mathematics tutor begins live-streaming his classes at 11pm, often to several thousand people. “I’ve shed more than seven pounds in the last two months,” he said of his late-night schedule.

But he can earn some 80,000 yuan each month.

“He’s different than teachers at school. They are often long-winded, Cao is more simple,” 17-year-old high school student Li Jiayao said.

Celebrity teachers are not unique to mainland China.

In South Korea, online cram school tutors can earn as much as US$8 million each year.

And Hong Kong is home to television celebrity “tutor kings” and “queens”.

But authorities seem concerned that school teachers may abandon the classroom for greener pastures online.

An Education Ministry official told state media in March that school teachers moving to Internet education might “affect their ordinary classes”, but added such moves would not be banned.

Another batch of students in China experienced nosebleeds, whooping coughs, sore throats, dizziness or inflammation in the eyes following activity on a newly laid running track, reinforcing belief that many such surfaces constructed in the country’s schools contain “toxic” materials.

An education official from the district in north-eastern China’s Dalian city, where the primary school is located, told The Paper news portal on Monday that a check on the air in the school’s classrooms found it was all right.

But an inspection on the running track, on which hundreds of students had gathered last Wednesday for a charity fair, is still ongoing, he revealed.

The track is closed pending the investigation.

The official claimed that he did not know how many students were affected, but the Shanghai-based portal counted at least 64 complaints posted online by parents.

“The weather last Wednesday was very hot and there was an unpleasant smell on the running track,” a parent told The Paper.

A company based in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, which laid the running track in the Dalian school, said when it handed it over to the school in January, the track passed all quality tests stipulated in the checklist.

According to Shi Jianhua, a chemistry expert, the students’ indispositions must be due to the presence of the chemicals toluene and xylene in the building materials.

“In some cases, paint thinner and gasoline are added, and because the surfaces are about 1cm thick, the foul smell will take some time to go away,” added Mr Shi, who had helped in drafting the national guidelines for the construction of rubberised tracks used by professional athletes.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, since last year, untold numbers of students in at least 12 provinces – as well as Shanghai and Beijing – had complained of physical distress likely to have been caused by “toxic” runways.

It is an urgent task now to perfect the rules on what materials to use in the construction of running tracks in schools, how they are laid, and the type of gases they are not allowed to emit, said Xinhua.

“China does not lack the expertise and knowledge. What we lack is stringent supervision,” it added.

A netizen wrote: “We keep hearing news about toxic running tracks and yet the problem is not eradicated.”

“Often, each case would end with the closure of a running track, but all probes seem to produce no conclusion. If we don’t tackle the problem seriously, we will one day see our innocent children being buried,” the netizen warned.

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