Don't Just Trust, Verify—Dismantling North Korea's Nuclear Program

February’s second round of six-party talks in Beijing aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program produced considerable progress on establishing a process and framework for future talks. However, no gains were made in narrowing the substantive differences that still divide Pyongyang from the other participants, most notably the United States.

The participants adopted a Chinese-drafted Chairman’s Statement and agreed to hold the next round of talks no later than the end of June and to form a working group to prepare for the plenary. If implemented, this would constitute an important step toward the institutionalization and continuation of the six-party negotiations process. The parties also agreed upon key principles such as the need for a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula and for peaceful coexistence on the peninsula. Since a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula would be conditioned upon the denuclearization of North Korea, the inclusion of this principle conveys North Korea’s willingness to continue dialogue on the ways and means of dismantling its nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, the term “peaceful coexistence” implies that the United States could be willing to provide the security assurances that the North has been persistently pursuing.

Although the meeting proceeded in a serious and cool-minded manner without the tension of the prior meetings, no agreement was reached in any substantive area. In particular, South Korea made a seemingly reasonable proposal for freezing and later dismantling the North’s nuclear program in exchange for energy aid. However, this proposal neither persuaded North Korea to admit its possession of a uranium-enrichment program—a key U.S. concern—nor discouraged Pyongyang from insisting on the retention of a peaceful nuclear program for the purpose of generating electricity.

As has been stated countless times from all sides, the ultimate goal of any nuclear settlement should be for North Korea to dismantle the entirety of its nuclear program in a “complete, irreversible, and verifiable”[1]  manner. Of these three catchwords, “verifiable” is the most important and the most contentious term because the United States and other nations will have no confidence in any unverifiable agreement or process that claims to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear program completely and irreversibly.

Yet, the development of a successful verification regime will be a formidable balancing act testing all of the parties’ political and diplomatic skills. Given the sensitive nature of the verification activities, the North will be reluctant to agree on many measures deemed necessary to achieve an effective verification system. The process of demystifying the nuclear puzzle of North Korea and deterring any chance of recurrence of the issue while securing general acceptance by the North Korean side will require a high degree of political sensitivity as well as technical sophistication.

Verifying disarmament and nonproliferation agreements has never been easy. Such efforts include the failures of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to detect Iran’s and Libya’s nuclear programs and the mixed record of UN inspections in Iraq (although that is looking more impressive by the day).[2]  Nonetheless, verification is an important and indispensable process. Had the IAEA not been allowed to conduct an initial inspection in North Korea in 1992, the North Korean nuclear program would not have been revealed at that time. In the case of South Africa, the willingness of the South African authorities to cooperate fully with IAEA inspectors resulted in a verification success story. From these experiences, we have learned that levels of voluntary cooperation and willingness to provide transparency on the part of the government in question often determine whether the general course of verification will be rough or smooth, controversial or successful.

When it comes to the verification of the North Korean nuclear program, the primary problem lies in the fact that the rest of the world is no longer willing to trust North Korea. Pyongyang has already twice cheated the international community and the IAEA. It prompted the first North Korean nuclear crisis a decade ago when IAEA inspections revealed that it had secretly extracted plutonium from the spent fuel in a experimental 5-megawatt reactor. Its second act of cheating—a secret program to develop highly enriched uranium (HEU)—was undertaken in an even more brazen manner. Despite the North’s solemn commitment under the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States to relinquish its nuclear program in return for the two light-water reactors (LWRs), North Korea has since clandestinely pursued the HEU program. In fact, the North is believed to have begun its HEU program in 1998, which implies that it must have been steadily and stealthily developing this capability throughout the first ever summit meeting between the two Koreas in 2001 and the acts of apparent cooperation that followed.

Objectives and Scope of Verification

The two primary objectives of verification are to confirm beyond a doubt the dismantling of all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development programs and to verify the correctness and completeness of North Korea’s declarations of its nuclear materials, facilities, and activities. For these purposes, a credible verification system must be constructed on the basis of such concepts as intrusiveness, unconditional and unrestricted access, and continuity, inter alia. Verification will require that the whole spectrum of issues related to the nuclear weapons development program be addressed, including enrichment and reprocessing activities, weapons and weaponization capabilities, and undeclared nuclear facilities, in addition to the normal fuel-cycle-related nuclear activities, materials, and facilities that were largely contained in the initial declaration provided by the North.[3] 

Underscoring the concept of inspections “any time, any place,”[4]  the crux of the Additional Protocol to the IAEA safeguards system, the inspections in North Korea should be virtually unlimited in terms of place and time. Moreover, there should be no limits made on the duration and number of inspections. Realistically speaking, some compromises will be unavoidable, particularly with respect to the visits to sensitive areas and facilities. Such compromises, however, cannot be made at the expense of the verification objectives themselves.

Moreover, unimpeded access to all nuclear programs, facilities, activities, and materials in North Korea must be guaranteed. Unlimited access would encompass on-site inspections and environmental sampling as well as the use of already established measures such as the accounting of nuclear materials, the installation of surveillance cameras, and the placing of seals. Furthermore, effective verification will require a full compilation and analysis of the information gathered through international and national technical means, including human intelligence and satellite information.[5]  Thus, the right to unimpeded access should be a prerequisite of an efficient system of verification.

In order to ensure the irreversibility of the dismantled nuclear program and to prevent its redevelopment, there should be a guarantee that allows for the continuation of inspections whenever suspicions arise about the renewal of the nuclear program until a final and complete settlement has been reached.

From a technical perspective, positive verification is significantly less difficult to attain than negative verification. Although it should be relatively less complicated to verify positively the correctness of the North’s declaration on nuclear facilities, materials, and activities, it will prove much more difficult to verify negatively the completeness of its declaration by determining that no additional facilities, materials, and activities have gone undeclared. Thus, it will likely be the results of the negative verification in North Korea that determine the success of the verification on the whole.

Ultimately, though, it will be the outcome rather than the architecture of the verification process that will matter. A well-constructed verification system that produces only half-satisfactory results is not preferable to a less well-organized verification system under which more satisfactory results are attained.[6] 

Modality of Verification

The question of who should perform the verification activities in North Korea is a matter of great sensitivity. It is not yet certain whether the modality of verification will be determined at the six-party talks or if a separate negotiation will be necessary. Because verification is a two-way process between the inspectors and the inspected, a successful and efficient verification cannot be achieved without the voluntary cooperation and transparency of the inspected nation. Therefore, the creation of a verification regime that is likely to ensure the North’s cooperation and transparency is no less important an issue than determining what must be verified.

It can hardly be expected that North Korea will grant the members of the verification regime its unconditional good faith. The deeply embedded distrust between North Korea and the international community, particularly the United States, will likely be a stumbling block in the initial phase of the verification process. In addition, the North has largely regarded the IAEA as representing the interests of the United States and other Western countries.[7]  Thus, various types of verification regimes are being considered, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

First, bilateral verification under U.S. leadership exists as a practical option and has been suggested by knowledgeable experts such as former U.S. negotiator Charles L. “Jack” Pritchard.[8]  Based on the exercise undertaken in Kumchangri in May 1999, quick and effective verification is with the full cooperation of North Korean authorities. On the other hand, if the insufficient cooperation of the North were to collide with the intrusiveness of U.S. inspections, the whole process of verification could fall into a stalemate and increase mistrust. There is also the possibility that friction during inspections could snowball unnecessarily due to the intrusion of domestic politics into the matter. Furthermore, the exclusion of the IAEA from the verification process would weaken the objectivity and credibility of the verification outcome and set a bad precedent for the international nonproliferation regime.

Second, another option is a trilateral verification group composed of the United States, South Korea, and Japan or a multilateral verification group that could also include China and Russia or the European Union. Allowing for the mediation of China and Russia or the EU should problems arise, such a system would help make the implementation of the agreement more smoother and less troublesome. In particular, China, having already played an important role in the process of establishing the multilateral dialogue, may be in a position to assume a similarly pivotal role during the verification process.

Moreover, it would make sense to have all members of the six-party talks participate in verification. Many believe that the more nations that are engaged in the process of verification, the more that the objectivity and credibility of the verification results will be enhanced. On the other hand, an augmented number of participants could slow preparation, implementation, analysis, and decision-making. In particular, the verification process would bear the additional burden of coordination of viewpoints on important questions.

Ideally, the IAEA, as the international nuclear verification organization, should play a central role in the verification process in order to enhance the objectivity and credibility of the process. Indeed, given its unique global role in verification it might be expected to carry out such inspections independently. This course might not be possible, however, given that the relationship between Pyongyang and the IAEA has generally been characterized by distrust and animosity.

Those relations first deteriorated when IAEA inspectors in 1992 discovered discrepancies between the North’s declaration of its nuclear material and facilities and the IAEA’s own measurements. The crisis, which escalated to the point in 1994 where North Korea threatened withdrawal from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), was ultimately defused by the Agreed Framework. Under that accord, the IAEA conducted 17 technical consultations with North Korea on issues related to monitoring of the frozen nuclear facilities and activities and the continued implementation of its IAEA safeguards agreement. However, the consultations did not lead to any serious movement toward allowing IAEA inspectors access to nuclear material that would help resolve the discrepancies, and the full implementation of the safeguards agreement was largely postponed. Additionally, after a new nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002, North Korea ejected IAEA inspectors from its territory and later announced its withdrawal from the NPT.

Still, there are several ways in which the IAEA can play its due role in the verification process in North Korea, particularly in concert with interested countries. If the verification were to involve bilateral, trilateral, or multilateral inspections, different tasks could be divided between the IAEA and other participants. Still, given the lingering distrust between the IAEA and North Korea, the international agency would first require the full implementation of the Safeguards Agreement and the conclusion of an additional protocol. Before returning to North Korea, the IAEA would certainly demand that a clear-cut mandate be spelled out and that it be granted free access to information, relevant personnel, and appropriate sites.

Some experts have proposed a new regional verification institution, that would include the IAEA and all members of the six-party talks, including North Korea. John Olsen of Sandia National Laboratories has suggested the establishment of a verification institution with the participation of the seven relevant parties concerned. Such an institution could prove useful, Olson wrote, assuming that any agreement on ending North Korea’s nuclear program came as part of a broader “Grand Bargain” that also addresses U.S. and allied concerns about chemical, missile, and conventional force issues and offers Pyongyang security guarantees and substantial economic aid.[9] 

Conclusion

The key to successful verification of the dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program depends primarily on determining how best to construct an effective and intrusive verification system that would achieve the goal of complete, accurate, and credible verification. Undoubtedly, many difficulties are likely to emerge when detailed discussions take place about the objects of inspection, the scope and frequency of access to the facilities, the formation and operation of the inspection teams, the use of inspection equipment, and the settlement of disputes. It will be possible to resolve some of these difficulties through compromise, but compromises can only be made if they do not impinge upon the fundamental objectives of verification.

With regard to the mode of verification, a parallel approach that utilizes both the IAEA and bilateral, trilateral, or multilateral inspections teams seems to be the most realistic. The North Korean nuclear issue is comprised of regional and global characteristics. Not only has North Korea defied the global regimes through its violation of the terms of the NPT and IAEA safeguards agreements, but it has refused to comply with its regional obligations under the Agreed Framework and the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, it would be logical to mobilize both regional and global resources and expertise in order to complete the process of verification in North Korea.

A regional approach through mutual agreement and consent can often be a powerful and effective instrument for attaining the goal of denuclearization and nonproliferation through an established verification system as long as the political environment remains favorable. By contrast, an international approach in which multiple players operate under a more elaborate decision-making process could become less effective and more intrusive if it tends to seek compromises to mediate disagreements.[10] 

Still, the IAEA, in addition to the fulfillment of its obligations as a global verification organization, can play an important role even in bilateral and regional verification activities, as seen in its involvement in the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC), several nuclear-weapon-free-zone agreements11  and the voluntary dismantlement of nuclear weapons in South Africa in 1993.

A similar division of labor for verification activities might make sense in North Korea given the shifting nature of the “North Korean nuclear problem.” One of the primary objectives of the Agreed Framework was to confirm the North’s past nuclear activities. Since then, however, the nuclear issue has become increasingly diversified, grave, and urgent. A logical sharing of responsibilities might have the IAEA perform those verification tasks that already fall under its NPT mandate, while the bilateral, trilateral, or multilateral verification teams could be tasked with the verification activities that extend beyond the NPT mandate. Furthermore, the verification tasks could be divided in accordance with the time frame of the nuclear issue.

Arguably, verifying the North’s past nuclear activities should be the IAEA’s primary domain because most of the relevant tasks fall under the obligations of the safeguards agreement. The IAEA was in pursuit of this same goal until the second nuclear crisis broke out in October 2002 and brought the entire process to a halt. Presumably, this task has become much more difficult as the records of the operating history and the relevant information on the flow of fissile materials have been mooted by the reopening of the 5-megawatt reactor and the reactivation of the radiochemical laboratory. If such a path is chosen, consideration should be given to a new UN Security Council resolution giving the IAEA a broader mandate than its previously limited authority.

On the other hand, the verification of the new elements, including the HEU program, will likely require a different set of expertise and technical skill and should thus be addressed from a different angle. Against this backdrop, it may be practical to task the bilateral or multilateral teams with the verification of the elements that emerged after October 2002 and to leave the verification of past activities and other matters to the IAEA.

No matter who carries out inspections, however, the verification of the North Korean nuclear program must not become a game of Iraq-style hide and seek. The verification process should be practical and reasonable and must proceed with clear-cut goals and instructions. The large stakes here dictate that any manageable disputes must not be allowed to disrupt the process and, as a result, destabilize the Korean Peninsula as well as all of Northeast Asia. It is crucial that the issue be resolved in a clear, straightforward, and timely manner.

NOTES

1. Key countries such as the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan seem to be in line with their demands for a “complete, irreversible, and verifiable” dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program as a prerequisite for the resolution of the nuclear issue.

2. As David Kay recently stated in an interview, the Iraqis greatly feared inspections and monitoring. He went on to say that “we were looking at the difficulty that the inspectors had in operating, whereas the Iraqis were looking at the effectiveness the inspectors were achieving even with those limitations.” With regard to the issue of incomplete truth about the weapons of mass destruction, Kay finds fault with the Iraqis’ consistent and widespread lying, arguing that it was not due to any fault of UNSCOM or UNMOVIC. “Searching for The Truth About Iraq’s WMD: An Interview With David Kay,” Arms Control Today, April 2004.

3. Kenneth Boutin, “North Korea: the challenge of verifying a moving target,” in Verification Yearbook 2003, Vertic, p.71.

4. The Additional Protocol regime provides the IAEA with complementary or pre-approved access to any location specified by the agency. By accepting the Additional Protocol, states guarantee the IAEA access on short notice to all of their declared and undeclared facilities. In addition, the agency’s ability to conduct short-notice inspections has increased through facilitation of the visa process for inspectors.

5. See Ephraim Asculai, Verification Revisited: The Nuclear Case (Washington, DC: Institute for Science and International Security, 2002), p. 74.

6. Ibid., p. 59.

7. Kenneth Boutin, ibid., p.76.

8. See “Former Negotiator Warns Bush: Last Chance For Diplomacy With North Korea,” Arms Control Today, Nov. 2003.

9. See John Olsen, “Regional Verification of a Denuclearized Korean Peninsula: A Strategy for Success After the Current Impasse Is Overcome,” CMC Paper, September 2003, p. 1.

10. Asculai, Verification Revisited, p. 55.

11. Under the Quadripartite Agreement between Brazil, Argentina, the IAEA and the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, Brazil and Argentina agreed to accept international safeguards for all nuclear materials and all nuclear activities in order to ensure that these materials were not used in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. ABACC and the IAEA work together when compatible safeguards criteria are issued by both agencies. Similarly, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) safeguards are coordinated with those safeguards applied by the IAEA under tripartite agreements concluded between the Member States, the Community and the IAEA. The EU is the only regional group with a regional safeguards system (under which the Euratom Safeguards Agency controls all nuclear materials and the IAEA only verifies the Euratom inspections).

Lew Kwang-chul is a Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations responsible for disarmament issues. Mission speechwriter Leslie Hough also contributed to the article. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Government of the Republic of Korea.