SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday unveiled a new facility to produce nuclear bomb fuels, with leader Kim Jong Un announcing plans to bolster the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.”
Some experts still question whether North Korea has functioning nuclear missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. But the nuclear plant's disclosure implies that Kim is eager to cement his country's status as a nuclear power and has no intentions of placing his bomb program on a negotiating table.
After visiting the site on Wednesday, Kim said he and other top officials “confirmed the order of priority for implementing the ambitious future plan designed to beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
KCNA said the facility used “more sophisticated technology” but didn’t provide further details like its location. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff assessed the site as a uranium enrichment plant and said it was closely coordinating with the United States to monitor North Korean nuclear activities.
KCNA photos showed Kim walking through narrow aisles lined with dense rows of silver tubes and pipes, in what appeared to be a centrifuge hall. Another image showed him speaking with senior officials in a meeting room, where a blurred graphic depicting a cone-shaped object was spread across a table. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the graphic showed a warhead design.
It's the third time that North Korea has disclosed a uranium enrichment site. In 2024, North Korea released photos of another covert uranium-enrichment plant. In 2010, North Korea showed one at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex to visiting American scholars.
Last September, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said that North Korea was operating a total of four uranium enrichment facilities including the Yongbyon complex, and that they were running everyday.
During his plant visit, Kim said the urgency for bolstering up the country’s nuclear war deterrent, both in quality and quantity, has grown because of confrontations with “the most ferocious enemies,” an apparent reference to the U.S. and South Korea.
Kim said exercising “the position of a nuclear weapons state” is his country's “invariable” stand. He said North Korea’s nuclear materials production capacity has more than doubled compared with five years ago, a claim that cannot be verified independently.
Experts say Kim wants an international recognition as a nuclear state so that he could demand the lifting of U.N. economic sanctions. They say Kim would ultimately push for arms reductions talks with the U.S. as a way to win concessions in return for a partial surrender of his nuclear capability.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to resume diplomacy with Kim, but the North Korean leader responded the Americans must first drop its demand for North Korea to denuclearize as a precondition for talks.
Since his first round of nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019, Kim has performed a provocative run of weapons tests and vowed repeatedly to “exponentially” expand the country’s nuclear arsenal.
This led to many experts believing North Korea now likely has nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland. But some still note North Korea hasn't proved it mastered last-remaining technological hurdles to obtain such missiles, including ensuring its warheads survive the conditions of atmospheric reentry. They say North Korea also need to perfect technologies to place multiple nuclear warheads on a single missile to defeat U.S. missile shields.
A senior South Korean official told lawmakers in 2018 that North Korea was estimated to have manufactured between 20 and 60 nuclear weapons, but some experts now put the size of the North’s arsenal at more than 100 warheads.
In 2023, North Korea unveiled a type of battlefield nuclear warheads. Some analysts speculated the warhead’s unveiling might be a prelude to a nuclear test. But North Korea hasn't carried out a test, which would have been its seventh detonation overall and the first since September 2017.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, front right, visits a new facility to produce nuclear bomb fuels at an undisclosed place in North Korea Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
FILE - In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un delivers a speech during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly at parliament in Pyongyang, North Korea, on March 23, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)
BASEL, Switzerland & ITHACA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 4, 2026--
Today, Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural innovation, and Ascribe Bioscience announced the signing of a landmark development and supply agreement for PHYTALIX®, a new biofungicide that has been proven to significantly enhance crop resistance against fungal, bacterial, and viral diseases.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260603799343/en/
Under the terms of the agreement, Syngenta will have exclusive commercial access to PHYTALIX® for use in rice and other major crops in Southeast Asia with potential expansion in other regions.
This commercial partnership follows four years of validation by Syngenta through extensive trials, where PHYTALIX® delivered strong results thus making the product a valuable tool in integrated pest management (IPM) practices, as for instance against Bacterial Leaf Blight, while supporting consistent and significant yield gains in rice.
PHYTALIX®, based on discoveries made in the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, mimics plants’ natural processes and enables growers to empower crops like rice, soybeans, corn, and wheat with enhanced resistance to a wide range of pathogens throughout the growing season.
This commercial agreement will bring rice farmers in the region a new sustainable option that bridges the gap between conventional solutions and biocontrols. Rice is a daily staple for nearly half of the world’s population, and demand is rising in the face of climate stress, emerging diseases, and resistances that challenge farmers’ ability to maintain yields.
PHYTALIX® offers high stability, low application rates, and a novel mode of action that controls a broad spectrum of pathogens making it suitable for adoption on farms of all sizes to control complex diseases like Bacterial Leaf Blight in rice.
“The collaboration with Ascribe reflects our commitment to bringing farmers differentiated solutions that help them implement more efficient farming strategies and more modern farming approaches by combined use of conventional and biological products,” said Emilhano Lima, Syngenta’s Global Head Seedcare and Biologicals. "Partnering with other innovators in the industry is crucial to accelerate the delivery of biological solutions to the farmers who need them most," concluded Syngenta’s Lima.
Dr. Jay Farmer, cofounder and CEO of Ascribe, added: "By partnering with Syngenta in Asia, we’re able to bring this innovation out of the lab and into the hands of farmers who need new, sustainable options to manage crop diseases. Syngenta’s partnership represents strong validation of the global potential for PHYTALIX®."
The companies will advance registration activities and market development across the covered Asian markets with the first commercial launches in Asia planned for 2029.
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About Syngenta
Syngenta is a global leader in agricultural innovation with a presence in more than 90 countries. Syngenta is focused on developing technologies and farming practices that empower farmers, so they can make the transformation required to feed the world’s population while preserving our planet. Its bold scientific discoveries deliver better benefits for farmers and society on a bigger scale than ever before. Guided by its Sustainability Goal, Syngenta is developing new technologies and solutions that support farmers to grow healthier plants in healthier soil with a higher yield. Syngenta Crop Protection is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland; Syngenta Seeds is headquartered in the United States.
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About Ascribe Bioscience
Ascribe Bioscience is an Ithaca, NY-based agricultural technology company developing natural crop protection solutions. Founded in 2017 based on research from the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, Ascribe’s flagship biofungicide, Phytalix®, harnesses small molecules from the soil microbiome to create effective, environmentally friendly disease control solutions that help farmers grow more resilient crops and harvest higher yields.
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This document may contain forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as “expect,” “would,” “will,” “potential,” “plans,” “prospects,” “estimated,” “aiming,” “on track” and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. For Syngenta, such risks and uncertainties include, amongst others, risks relating to legal proceedings, regulatory approvals, new product development, increasing competition, customer credit risk, general economic and market conditions, refinancing risk, interest rate fluctuations and access to capital markets, compliance and remediation, evolving environmental and sustainability regulations, changes in agricultural policies or subsidy regimes, intellectual property rights, implementation of organizational changes, impairment of intangible assets, consumer perceptions of genetically modified crops and organisms or crop protection chemicals, climatic variations, fluctuations in exchange rates and/or grain prices, supply chain disruptions, (geo)political risks, trade restrictions, sanctions, and export controls, natural disasters, and breaches of data security or other disruptions of information technology. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors.
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Syngenta and Ascribe Bioscience partner to bring new biofungicide to Asian farmers
