A Japanese monthly magazine says a North Korean nuclear scientist is taking refuge in a third country after escaping from his communist country last year.

According to "Gendai," Kim Kwang-bin, the ex-head of a North Korean atomic research center, revealed that North Korea had succeeded in nuclear development using highly-enriched uranium in 1994, shortly before the death of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. The nuclear scientist's statement was taken from comments he made during an interview in March.

The report also quoted Kim as saying that Pyongyang's enriched-uranium program was launched under extreme secrecy in 1988 and was only revealed to the outside world when a member of the North's defense science center defected to the United States in February 2001.