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Satellite reveals suspicious activity at North Korean nuclear facility
By Will Refvem
News Editor
FILE PHOTO
South Korean president Roh Moo-huyn endorses the "sunshine policy," first introduced by his predecessor Kim Dae Jung.
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North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship pushed the United States one step closer to the brink when it announced Wednesday that it had reactivated its five-megawatt Yongbyon nuclear facility.
As late as Saturday there were reports that U.S. satellite photos showed North Korean trucks moving an estimated 8,000 spent fuel rods out of storage.
The rods can be reprocessed to extract weapons-grade plutonium. The story was leaked to the New York Times last Friday and confirmed by the White House.
According to North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, the plutonium would be used for electricity, which the impoverished hermit kingdom badly needs. But U.S. officials and nuclear experts agree that the electricity produced by the plant would be negligible. Experts estimate that the plant at Yongbyon could produce enough plutonium in six months for a half-dozen bombs.
The latest developments on the Korean peninsula have made some administration officials uneasy; the North has already demonstrated that it has the missile capabilities to deliver any nuclear warheads it might produce.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reportedly held video conferences with top brass in the Pacific Command to discuss a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.
Even as Washington moves closer to the point of no return in its confrontation with Pyongyang, other players in the region, such as South Korea and Japan, are pushing for a diplomatic solution. On Wednesday a group of South Korean tourism officials and business people traveled to a mountain resort in the North via a new road.
The road is the first overland connection between the two countries since they were split in 1945.
The road was part of a series of “cooperation projects” agreed upon at a North-South summit in 2000. The projects reflect the “sunshine policy” of former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and his hand-picked successor, current president Roh Moo-hyun.
Roh won the recent election in South Korea by riding a wave of anti-U.S. sentiment that was most recently aflame at the acquittal of two U.S. servicemen whose vehicle struck and killed a South Korean girl while on maneuvers. Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the two men were tried in a U.S. military court-martial instead of South Korean courts.
Many South Koreans are beginning to chafe at the legacy of SOFA, which was designed in the Cold War to give flexibility to U.S. military forces based in Korea.
For many in the South it is a humiliating relic of a bygone era—a throwback to the days before South Korea’s “economic miracle.”
Despite a growing and vocal anti-U.S. minority in South Korea, the governments are still largely on the same page when it comes to dealing with Pyongyang. South Korea has echoed sentiments expressed by the United States and others that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which violates more than one international agreement, is unacceptable.
The North began its defiance in October, when it announced it was resuming a nuclear weapons program in violation of 1994’s Agreed Framework, in which Pyongyang agreed to give up its weapons program in exchange for aid and light-water nuclear reactors to be used for generating electricity.
The stakes became that much higher on January 11 of this year when the North very publicly and ceremoniously announced it was withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Pak Gil-yon, North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, accused the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of being a patsy for Washington, adding that any sanctions imposed on North Korea by the United Nations would be interpreted as a declaration of war.
While the Bush administration continues to see North Korea as part of the “axis of evil,” many observers have noted that its recent actions are similar to those of 1994, when it used nuclear brinkmanship to leverage the Agreed Framework. It may be, they say, that Pyongyang is fishing for aid and will back off if it is given.
Many fear, though, that Bush may have painted himself into a corner through fiery rhetoric and repeated insistence that the United States will not “reward bad behavior.”
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