SEOUL — North Korea boasted Tuesday to running "thousands" of nuclear centrifuges, a week after launching a deadly artillery attack on South Korea, as China pressed for six-nation crisis talks.
State media in the North, which has already tested two atomic bombs made from plutonium, said "many thousands of centrifuges" are operating to enrich uranium at a new plant which it claims is for peaceful energy purposes.
The country first disclosed the new plant to US experts less than two weeks before its artillery assault, which killed two civilians and two marines on a South Korean island near the disputed Yellow Sea border.
Experts and senior US officials fear the plant could easily be configured to make weapons-grade uranium.
Analysts say the nuclear revelation and artillery attack appeared coordinated to pressure Washington and Seoul into resuming dialogue and aid, and possibly to bolster the credentials of the North's leader-in-waiting Kim Jong-Un.
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