North Korea Threatens to Restart Plutonium Weapons Program

Why wouldn't they threaten the World, seriously what is going to happen to them. Obama is acting powerless to save US reporters being taken hostage by North Korea, so why wouldn't they spit in the worlds face.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday that if the international community punishes it for next month's planned missile launch it will restart a nuclear plant that makes weapons grade plutonium.

The secretive state this week put a long-range missile in place for a launch the United States warned would violate U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for past weapons tests.

The planned launch, seen by some countries as a disguised military exercise, is the first big test for U.S. President Barack Obama in dealing with the prickly North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.

North Korea warned that any action by the U.N. Security Council to punish it would be a "hostile act."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Korea has positioned what is thought to be a long-range missile on its launch pad, a U.S. counter-proliferation official said on Wednesday.The official confirmed a Japanese media report.

North Korea recently informed a pair of U.N. agencies that it plans to launch a satellite. The launch is slated for sometime between April 4-8, according to Yonhap, South Korea's state-sponsored news agency.

North Korea is technically capable of launching a rocket in as little as two to four days, according to Kim Taewoo, an expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, but who doubts a launch will come that soon.