Did North Korea Cheat?

Selig S. Harrison

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005

Summary:  Two years ago, Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret nuclear weapons program. But how much evidence was there to back up the charge? A review of the facts shows that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the data--while ignoring the one real threat North Korea actually poses.

Selig S. Harrison is Director of the Asia Program and Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of Korean Endgame.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

It is much easier to make low-enriched uranium (LEU)--the fuel needed to power light-water plutonium reactors--than it is to make weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), as Washington has accused Pyongyang of doing. A relatively small number of centrifuges is needed to make LEU, but the production of HEU in quantities sufficient for nuclear weapons requires the continuous operation of hundreds--or thousands--of centrifuges over a long period. Richard Garwin, a respected nuclear scientist, has estimated that 1,300 high-performance centrifuges would have to operate full time for three years to make the 60 kilograms of fissile material needed for a basic ("gun-type") nuclear weapon. Accomplishing that would require an enormous sustained input of electricity, without fluctuation or interruption. Moreover, the operation of a multi-centrifuge "cascade" requires a high-powered motor with a speed twice that of a MiG-21 jet engine. North Korea cannot produce engines even for its Russian-supplied MiGs, and it has only limited, highly unreliable electricity capabilities. It is therefore unlikely that the country is able at present to build or operate the equipment needed, over a long period, to produce weapons-grade uranium.

Apart from the electricity problem, when producing HEU, corrosion of the centrifuge rotors leads to their frequent breakdown. To operate an enrichment plant with 1,300 centrifuges, North Korea--according to Robert Alvarez, who served as senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy from 1993 to 1999 and conducted inspection visits to North Korea under the 1994 freeze accord--would need hundreds of replacement centrifuges. Says Alvarez, "I was very impressed with the primitive character of many aspects of their plutonium program, and I'm skeptical about their ability to deal with the complexities of a big uranium program. To make and operate thousands of centrifuges successfully, they would have to rely on so many outside sources. They would need ready access to the most sophisticated machine tools. They don't have the money that the Iranians do to buy this fancy technology. Remember, we found that the Libyans couldn't pull it off, even with Pakistani help."

Given the nature and scope of its attempts to buy various component parts, it seems clear that North Korea did explore the option of developing weapons-grade enrichment technology. Faced as it has been with technical constraints, however, Pyongyang may well have been forced to scale down its ambitions, limiting its efforts to LEU production, or a pilot HEU program, or no coherent program at all. The North Korean ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ri Yong Ho, hinted that this is the case during two seminars held in London during 2004, saying, in the same words each time, "We do not have an enrichment program, as such."

LEU facilities, furthermore, would not violate international nonproliferation norms. Signatories of the NPT are permitted to possess LEU facilities to make fuel for their civilian nuclear reactors if these facilities are open to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. North Korea's status as an NPT signatory is currently suspended, but it did accept IAEA inspections under the Agreed Framework. Pyongyang may have viewed its LEU facilities in this context--not necessarily as a first step toward a possible weapons program, but as a means of avoiding permanent reliance on foreign-supplied fuel for the two light-water reactors being built to provide electricity under the 1994 freeze agreement. North Korea and a multinational consortium set up to build the reactors agreed that they would "initially" be powered with fuel supplied by the consortium, known as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). After that, KEDO and North Korea agreed, in ambiguous language, that North Korea would be free to choose its source of supply. KEDO no doubt envisaged foreign suppliers, but Pyongyang may well have hoped to provide the fuel itself, drawing on its extensive deposits of uranium ore for an LEU program.

Moreover, under the freeze accord, the IAEA did not have the right to search for or monitor undeclared nuclear facilities until after a "significant portion" of the first light-water reactor had been completed. North Korea may well have reasoned that it did not have to declare any LEU facilities until KEDO fulfilled its own obligations to complete the construction of the reactors (which has not happened yet, since KEDO suspended the construction after the breakdown of the Agreed Framework).

When asked whether Pyongyang possessed civilian enrichment facilities on April 22, 2004, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan quickly denied that it had any type of enrichment program. On August 12, however, his Foreign Ministry colleague, Li Gun, edged toward acknowledgment of such a program when he was asked a similar question at a New York seminar. "We are entitled to have it for peaceful purposes," Li said.

THE LETTER OF THE LAW

Did North Korea, then, cheat on the 1994 agreement with the United States, as the Bush administration has insisted? All of the operative provisions of the accord relate to freezing the North's plutonium program and make no reference to uranium enrichment. Pyongyang scrupulously observed these provisions until the Bush administration stopped the oil shipments in December 2002. The agreement does, however, reaffirm a 1991 agreement between North and South Korea that banned "uranium enrichment facilities," making no distinction between HEU and LEU. Pyongyang clearly did violate that accord by pursuing uranium-enrichment efforts (however limited they may turn out to have been) and thus, technically, violated the 1994 Agreed Framework as well.