Kim has been accelerating North Korea’s production of weapons-grade plutonium as well as its ballistic missile capabilities since the collapse of an international non-proliferation agreement.
And he has now amassed 50kg of plutonium since reactivating its Yongbyon nuclear power plant in 2013, according a report from the defence ministry in Seoul.
It comes after some serious sabre-rattling by Kim who boasted in his New Year address Pyongyang was in the “final stages” of test-firing a fully-fledged intercontinental ballistic missile.
North Korea's Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has a range of 5,500 miles could cause world-wide devastation if its unhinged leader decided to launch an attack.
Siegfried Hecker, a professor of nuclear physics at Stanford University in the US who has visited the Yongbyon plant, said North Korea was capable of producing 80kg of highly enriched uranium each year.
With such an output Kim could expect three new nuclear weapons every 12 months and will have created an arsenal of 50 nuclear warheads by 2020.
The latest South Korean figures do not take into account material generated by North Korea’s programme of secretly enriching uranium which, Seoul says, is beyond its capacities to estimate.
The report also warned Pyongyang was developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles but said the technology was not yet ready for deployment.
It also pointed out that 800,000 extra soldiers had been recruited by Kim’s generals over the last two years to give North Korea a fighting force of 1.28 million troops.
Pyongyang conducted two underground nuclear tests last year, and test-fired 20 missiles of various sizes in an intense period of activity designed to make the rest of the world aware of its growing military ambitions.
It has previously fired ballistic rockets to launch satellites, using similar technology to intercontinental missiles.
US intelligence chiefs are keeping a close eye on military activities after one of Kim’s henchmen accused Washington of provocation.
A spokesman for the for the North Korean foreign ministry said: “The US is wholly to blame for pushing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to have developed intercontinental ballistic missiles as it has desperately resorted to anachronistic policy, hostile towards the DPRK for decades to encroach its sovereignty and vital rights.
“Anyone who wants to deal with the DPRK would be well advised to secure a new way of thinking after having clear understanding of it.”
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