South Korea’s state intelligence agency says North Korea has restarted its five megawatt graphite moderated reactor at Yongbyon.

According to ruling Saenuri Party Rep. Cho Won-jin, National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief Nam Jae-joon told a parliamentary intelligence committee meeting on Tuesday that the reactor was restarted around August. The spy agency chief also said the North is currently testing long-range missile engines at a rocket launch facility on the west coast.

While there had been rumors and speculations that the reactor has been restarted, this is the first official confirmation of the kind to come from the NIS.

Earlier, 38 North, a blog on North Korea run by the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, had raised this possibility citing satellite photos indicating the discharge of hot waste water from the reactor's cooling system.

North Korea had announced in April that it will resume its reactor. The communist regime had said at the time that it will take steps to restart the operation of its five megawatt graphite moderated reactor, which was suspended and invalidated following the October 2007 six-party agreement.

The Yongbyon reactor is believed to be capable of producing six kilograms of plutonium, an amount enough to manufacture one nuclear weapon each year.

Military and intelligence authorities in Seoul suspect that the North has around 40 to 50 kilograms of plutonium in total, an amount that could potentially produce eight to 12 nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang is also believed to have started in the mid-1980s the development of a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, which could also be used to produce nuclear weapons.

In November 2010, Pyongyang invited U.S. nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker to view its modern centrifugal facilities, while claiming to be operating 2,000 centrifuges.

If this claim is true, the North is capable of producing 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium annually. It is believed that 10 to 15 kilograms of HEU are needed in order to produce one nuclear weapon.

The general view is that North Korea restarted the reactor for a number of purposes at home and abroad. First, the communist regime may be serious about advancing its nuclear capacity. By restarting the Yongbyon reactor, it can extract used fuel rods and produce plutonium.

This will pressure South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, who have refused to engage in talks with the North before it takes sincere steps toward denuclearization.

Domestically, the North seeks to implement the dual pursuit of developing its economy and nuclear arms, a platform adopted by its ruling Workers' Party in March.

However, despite North Korea's apparently tactical moves, the six-nation nuclear dialogue is unlikely to get off the ground any time soon, as the U.S. currently faces some more urgent concerns to deal with, such as the government shutdown, as well as those in Syria and Iran..