The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

or choice between pipeline gas and nuclear power. Both will be needed to meet the growing economic needs of North Korea, South Korea and a unified Korea. The American interest in a stable Korea would clearly be served by a policy in which the two reactors are supple- mented by a Sakhalin pipeline. In political terms, howev- er, the issue confronting the Bush administration is how to head off a North Korean nuclear weapons program. In my view, the best way to do so is to replace the Agreed Framework with a new agreement that combines pipeline gas with a scaled-down nuclear power program in return for an inspection regime fully adequate to verify that the nuclear weapons effort has ended. Both North Korea and South Korea would strongly oppose a revision of the 1994 accord in which both nuclear reactors would be abandoned in favor of pipeline gas. But they might well agree to reduce the KEDO com- mitment to one reactor, instead of two, if that would keep the nuclear agreement on track. In order to make such a compromise attractive to the United States, Pyongyang would have to reaffirm its com- mitment to the existing provisions of the Agreed Framework, under which it must dismantle its frozen nuclear facilities, designed to produce plutonium, coinci- dent with the completion of the reactor project. In addi- tion, North Korea would have to accept new provisions providing for inspecting and dismantling the uranium pro- gram and reaffirming existing provisions that require International Atomic Energy Agency inspections to deter- mine how much fissile material had been accumulated before 1994. The Bush administration wants these inspections to begin immediately, much sooner than the Agreed Framework requires. Pyongyang would accept such accelerated inspections, in my view, if the schedule of inspections is linked to progress in the construction of the reactor. In return, the United States would drop its opposition to an ExxonMobil gas pipeline through North Korea; encourage multilateral assistance for gas-fired power stations, transmission grids and fertilizer factories along the pipeline route, and support interim KEDO energy aid to the North pending completion of the reac- tor and the pipeline. For the Bush administration, inducing North Korea to accept one reactor instead of two, together with strength- ened nuclear inspections, could be presented in the United States as a political victory, partially vindicating Republican charges that Clinton gave North Korea too much in the 1994 accord, on terms that were not tough enough. A Comprehensive Regional Approach For Pyongyang, getting at least one of the reactors up and running is a political imperative, if only because the Agreed Framework bore the personal imprint of the late President Kim Il Sung and of his son Kim Jong Il, now North Korea’s leader. Equally important, since Japan and South Korea both have large civilian nuclear programs, North Korea regards nuclear power as a technological sta- tus symbol. Like Tokyo and Seoul, Pyongyang wants nuclear power in its energy mix to reduce dependence on petroleum. Still another factor is that North Korea has a force of 7,500 nuclear technicians, many of them trained in Russia, who have been in a state of limbo since the 1994 accord and are awaiting new jobs when the KEDO nuclear complex at Kumho is completed. In the case of South Korea, support for the KEDO program comes in part from vested interests with a stake in contracts to build the reactors. The South has already spent some $800 million on the reactors, and South Korean companies have contracts totaling another $2.3 billion for the construction work ahead. As a State Department official has observed, “the bribes have already been paid.” Still, half a loaf would be better than none, and the money spent by the South has gone, so far, only to the infrastructure at the site and to the first reac- tor. South Korea likes the KEDO project because it is con- fident that the reactors will someday belong to a unified Korea. By contrast, Japan made its $1 billion commit- ment to KEDO grudgingly and has dragged its feet on meeting its obligations. In Japanese eyes, North Korea cannot be trusted to observe nuclear safety standards, and Tokyo fears another Chernobyl in Japan’s backyard. Because Tokyo has already spent $400 million on the pro- ject, it is reluctant to see it scrapped entirely, but like Seoul, it might accept a compromise limiting the project to one reactor. A government-controlled Japanese company, SODE- CO (Sakhalin Oil Development Cooperation Company), is ExxonMobil’s principal partner in Sakhalin I, with a 30- percent stake. Therefore, if Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s Sept. 16, 2002, summit meeting with Kim Jong Il eventually leads to a normalization of Japanese relations with Pyongyang, Japan might well support a pipeline from F O C U S 52 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3