In a preliminary step toward hampering North Korea’s ability to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, a team of U.S., Chinese, and Russian experts visited Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in September to determine potential ways they could be disabled. The results of the team’s work, which includes a draft disablement proposal discussed with North Korean officials, will be considered during the plenary of the six-party talks beginning Sept. 27. In addition to agreeing on specific steps for disablement, those talks are expected to lay out a timetable for implementing the remaining pieces of a Feb. 13 agreement in which North Korea agreed to declare and disable all of its nuclear programs. (See ACT, March 2007.)
Disablement refers to temporarily rendering nuclear facilities inoperable in order to prevent them from being quickly restarted. U.S. officials want to prevent a repeat of 2002, when an earlier agreement in which North Korea pledged to shut down its Yongbyon reactor collapsed and North Korea was able to restart the reactor in little more than one month. By contrast, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, said “the purpose of disablement is to make sure [the facility] cannot be working for several years.”
Due to the variety of different technical approaches to disablement, the experts team was sent to the facilities to determine the most appropriate way to handle the specific facilities at the Yongbyon site. North Korea shut down the Yongbyon complex in July. (See ACT, September 2007.)
The experts team consisted of seven U.S. officials from the Departments of State and Energy and the National Security Council and one expert each from China and Russia. The U.S. team was lead by the director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the State Department, Sung Kim. The team arrived in North Korea Sept. 11 and visited the Yongbyon facilities Sept. 12-14. On Sept. 14, the team returned to Pyongyang for discussions on the disablement process with North Korean officials.
The experts team was limited to personnel from the three states in the six-party talks that are recognized by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as nuclear-weapon states. The other participants besides North Korea are Japan and South Korea. A State Department official told Arms Control Today Sept. 20 that because the disablement process dealt with sensitive activities leading to the production of nuclear weapons, it was determined that limiting the composition of the team to China, Russia, and the United States was the most appropriate way to address this sensitivity.
The team focused on three facilities in particular: a five-megawatt research reactor, a plutonium reprocessing facility, and a nuclear fuel fabrication plant. North Korea has two other nuclear reactors whose construction remains at an early stage, a 50-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt reactor at Taechon.
In addition to the facilities associated with Pyongyang’s plutonium-based nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials have consistently stated that North Korea will also need to declare and disable any activities and facilities related to uranium enrichment. Hill told reporters Sept. 14 that the issue of uranium enrichment “is something that all have agreed must be resolved by the end of the year in terms of including it in a declaration, assuming that is appropriate, which we believe it is, and then disabling whatever uranium-enrichment program there is.”
According to U.S. officials, North Korea admitted to conducting work on uranium enrichment during a 2002 bilateral meeting. (See ACT, November 2002.) Since then, Pyongyang has not publicly admitted to engaging in such activities.
Therefore, although North Korea has pledged to declare and disable all of its nuclear facilities, U.S. officials said the team solely focused on the Yongbyon facilities because enough information is already known about the operation of these facilities in order to begin the process of disablement before a full declaration is provided. State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack told reporters Sept. 14 that “we are, at this point, dealing with the only known that we have, and that is Yongbyon and all the facilities at Yongbyon.”
Further discussions on disablement of other North Korean nuclear facilities will likely be pursued in the context of the six-party talks. The next plenary session was originally scheduled to begin Sept. 19, but Beijing informed the governments participating in the talks Sept. 17 that the session would be postponed due to North Korean objections of unknown reasons. Talks are tentatively scheduled to begin Sept. 27.
In addition to receiving the report of the experts visiting the Yongbyon complex, the plenary session is also expected to consider the results of meetings of five working groups held in August and September. The topics addressed by the working groups include North Korean denuclearization, U.S.-North Korean relations, Japanese-North Korean relations, economic and energy assistance for North Korea, and the creation of a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism.
New Japanese PM May Promote Flexibility
The Sept. 23 election of former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda may result in a softening of Tokyo’s approach toward Pyongyang. His predecessor, Shinzo Abe, had sought to maintain significant pressure on Pyongyang to account for the abduction of several dozen Japanese citizens over the last several decades. Fukuda told reporters Sept. 15, “The situation has become so rigid that there’s no room for negotiation…. [W]e must find a channel to convey to [North Korea] our desire and readiness to conduct negotiations while maintaining the dialogue-and-pressure approach to resolve the [abductions] problem.”
Kenneth Quinones, a State Department official on North Korea affairs during the Clinton administration, said that a Fukuda leadership may provide room for further movement on the abduction issue and therefore the prospect of removing North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list. Quinones told Arms Control Today Sept. 15, “Chances are that Fukuda would pursue a more flexible stance vis-à-vis North Korea regarding… the abduction issue, and his policy might align more closely with that now being pursued by…Hill.” A State Department official told Arms Control Today Sep. 18 that, during U.S. bilateral discussions with North Korea regarding the terrorism list, the United States has continually asserted that Pyongyang “needs to address Japan’s concerns” regarding the abduction issue.
The United States has further insisted that progress on denuclearization is also a prerequisite for removal from the list. In addition, U.S. officials have indicated that concerns regarding proliferation by North Korea, including suspicions of recent assistance to Syria’s unconventional or missile programs, would need to be addressed in the six-party talks.
A discussion of the abduction issue was held during the Japan-North Korea working group meeting held Sept. 4-5 in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. However, the meeting did not result in any progress on the topic.
A Japanese diplomat told Arms Control Today Sept. 20 that the talks in Mongolia were an improvement on the previous session but stated that, “North Korea did not come up with tangible and concrete steps for resolving the issue.” North Korea walked out on bilateral talks in March when the abduction issue was raised by Japan. He added that the two countries did agree to continue meeting as often as possible.
Although there may be a bilateral meeting between Tokyo and Pyongyang on the side of the next session of plenary talks, the diplomat indicated that North Korean experts addressing the abductions would not be in attendance, so a serious consideration of the issue was not likely.
Additional Fuel Oil Aid for North Korea
The United States, along with China, Russia, and South Korea, have agreed to provide North Korea with one million metric tons of heavy fuel oil in return for progress on declaring all of its nuclear activities and the disabling of all of its facilities. (See ACT, March 2007.)
The first shipment of 50,000 tons was provided by South Korea in July just prior to the shutdown of the Yongbyon facilities.
China was scheduled to deliver the second shipment of 50,000 tons at the end of August, but the shipment was delayed, and the first portion of the fuel was not delivered until Sept. 16.
The United States is expected to deliver the next shipment of fuel, and a notice was sent Sept. 11 to inform Congress that enough progress has been made in the talks with Pyongyang to prepare for the next fuel shipment. This notice was a presidential waiver that allows for an exception to congressionally imposed sanctions on states such as North Korea. A State Department official indicated that funding for the fuel oil would move forward unless Congress explicitly rejected it. However, the official further stated that actually proceeding with the shipment would depend on continued North Korean cooperation. In 2002 the United States decided to cut off fuel oil shipments after North Korea’s alleged admission about its uranium-enrichment program.