The North Korean Nuclear Crisis

Paul Leventhal & Steven Dolley

Nuclear Control Institute

June 16, 1994

Overview

The confrontation between North Korea (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or DPRK) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over North Korea's nuclear program presents a serious risk of war in Northeast Asia and poses an unprecedented test for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the IAEA's system of inspections and audits called "safeguards." The crisis raises a number of important issues, including the enforceability and effectiveness of the NPT and IAEA safeguards, the proliferation hazards of civilian use of weapon-usable nuclear materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium), interactions among such nuclear programs in Northeast Asia, and potential consequences of conventional attacks on nuclear reactors in North and South Korea, which could amount to nuclear war conducted by conventional means.

Evolution of the Crisis

The DPRK nuclear research program dates back to the 1950s, when it entered into nuclear cooperation agreements with the Soviet Union and China. In the mid-1960s, DPRK received a small research reactor and critical assembly from the Soviet Union. At that time DPRK was not a member of the NPT. In 1977, the reactor and critical assembly were placed under limited, facility- specific IAEA safeguards that are applied to certain nuclear facilities in non-NPT nations.

In the early 1980s, possibly with Soviet assistance, DPRK constructed a 5 megawatt-electric (MWe) gas-cooled, graphite moderated nuclear reactor, a clone of Great Britain's first reactor at Calder Hall. Fueled with natural uranium, this reactor became operational in 1986. Upon discovering that DPRK was building this reactor, the U.S. pressured the Soviet Union to urge DPRK to join the NPT. DPRK joined the NPT in December 1985, perhaps persuaded by a Soviet offer of nuclear power reactors. (These reactors were never constructed.)

1987 NPT Violation Ignored

After joining the NPT, a member state is required to conclude a safeguards agreement with the IAEA within 18 months permitting inspections of all plants using fissile materials. DPRK notified the IAEA 18 months after signing the NPT that it had been sent the wrong paperwork for the safeguards agreement--- that is, it received the form to be filled out for non-NPT safeguards rather than NPT safeguards. The IAEA responded by sending DPRK the correct form and giving the North Koreans another 18 months to complete it. Apparently under Chinese and Soviet pressure, neither the IAEA nor the Reagan or Bush administrations brought pressure on DPRK to complete its inspections arrangement with the IAEA, despite this clear violation of the NPT. In 1989, DPRK shut down its 5 megawatt reactor for about three months with no IAEA inspectors present. It is suspected of having removed fuel containing enough plutonium for one or two bombs for its nuclear-weapons program. DPRK did not enter into an NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA until 1992, more than six years after joining the treaty.

DPRK had placed several political conditions on its acceptance of safeguards, including demands that U.S. nuclear weapons be withdrawn from South Korea and that the annual U.S.- South Korean military exercise ("Team Spirit") be canceled. In September 1991, President Bush ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from overseas, including South Korea. Later that year, the U.S. and South Korea agreed to suspend the 1992 Team Spirit exercise as a good-will gesture.

In December 1991, North and South Korea signed a bilateral agreement prohibiting nuclear weapons, as well as uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities, from the Korean peninsula. A month earlier, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker had urged that the agreement prohibit acquisition of any weapon- usable nuclear materials (plutonium and highly-enriched uranium), as well as the construction of facilities to produce them, but the materials-acquisition element was not included. This bilateral agreement is still not in effect because negotiations on its implementation and verification became entangled with broader talks on North-South Korean relations and possible reunification, which remain deadlocked.

DPRK finally concluded an NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA in early January 1992. In June 1992, the first inspections under this agreement commenced. DPRK finally admitted that it was constructing a large reprocessing plant, which it called a Radiochemical Laboratory, at Yongbyon, near its reactors. Reprocessing chemically separates plutonium, a weapon-usable fissile material, from uranium and fission products in spent nuclear reactor fuel. This plant was reportedly first detected by U.S. intelligence in late 1988 or early 1989.

DPRK declared that it had removed a number of damaged fuel rods from its gas-graphite reactor when it was shut down for about 100 days in 1989, and that these rods had been reprocessed in March 1990 to separate small amounts (gram quantities) of plutonium, samples of which were provided to the IAEA for analysis. DPRK also admitted that, using Soviet-supplied "hot cells" (laboratory-scale reprocessing units), it had separated minute amounts of plutonium in 1975 from uranium irradiated in its research reactor.

Plutonium Diversions Suspected

In July 1992, the IAEA analyzed the plutonium samples and test results from the North Korean hot cells. Based on differing amounts of the radioactive isotope americium-241 (a decay product of plutonium) in the samples, the IAEA concluded that DPRK must have reprocessed on at least three separate occasions in 1989, 1990 and 1991. DPRK denied this charge.

In February 1993, during its sixth visit to DPRK, the IAEA was refused permission to inspect two sites at the Yongbyon facility that inspectors had visited briefly in September 1992 and were believed to contain reprocessing waste that had not been declared by DPRK. DPRK denied that the sites contained nuclear waste and refused to permit inspection of the facilities on grounds that they were military sites not related to the nuclear program. The IAEA was not satisfied with this explanation. On February 25, the IAEA Board of Governors formally demanded that DPRK permit a "special inspection"---that is, a visit to a site where the presence of undeclared or diverted fissile material is suspected.

In response, DPRK announced on March 12 that it was withdrawing from the NPT. Because the terms of the NPT call for three months' notice of withdrawal, a flurry of diplomacy ensued. Talks between the IAEA and DPRK, and between the U.S. and DPRK, were unable to resolve the impasse on inspections. On April 1, the IAEA referred the dispute to the U.N. Security Council, which is charged with dealing with violations of IAEA safeguards. On May 10, the Security Council passed a resolution calling for DPRK to stay in the NPT and comply with IAEA safeguards, though no penalties for noncompliance were specified. The resolution passed with no votes against (though China and Pakistan abstained). DPRK rejected the resolution as interference in its internal affairs.

On June 11, one day before the three-month notice period ended, DPRK announced that it would "suspend" its withdrawal from the NPT "for as long as is necessary." However, DPRK still refused to permit special inspections of the suspected nuclear waste sites.

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