Reactor restart assailed

The South Korean government scrambled yesterday for a response to North Korea’s reactivation of a nuclear reactor. For a time, it appeared unwilling even to acknowledge that the five-megawatt Yeongbyeon reactor had been restarted, as U.S. officials reported a day earlier.
President Roh Moo-hyun directed national security ministries to “check the validity of the reports and devise responses,” the Blue House spokeswoman, Song Kyoung-hee, said.
Other officials said that, without first-hand confirmation from the North, it was impossible to know for sure whether the reactor was working. It had been mothballed in 1994 under an agreement Pyeongyang signed with the United States.
The lack of an announcement from the North indicates that it wants to put the international community to a guessing game, an official said.
By afternoon, however, Seoul apparently had decided to proceed on the assumption that the report was true. A Foreign Ministry statement urged the North to cooperate with the international community’s effort for a peaceful resolution of the issue.
Seok Tong-youn, the ministry spokesman, expressed deep regret and concern and said reactivation of the reactor did not help with peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. He urged the North to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said restarting the reactor was part of Pyeongyang’s strategy to drag Washington to the bargaining table.
The undersecretary-general of the United Nations, Maurice Strong, returned from the latest of a series of trips to Pyeongyang and told reporters that top officials there listed a number of demands on Washington, including recognition of its regime and energy aid.
Mr. Strong said officials told him that operation of the Yeongbyeon plant was needed for electric power, a claim derided by international experts who say the plant consumes nearly as much energy as it produces. But its waste, the experts say, can be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.
A Japanese report quoted Tokyo officials as saying North Korea had tested a rocket booster in January at a missile launch site covered with structures apparently intended to deter surveillance. The North suspended test-firing of missiles in 1999, a year after it launched a Taepodong missile that flew over Japan, but it is thought to have tested booster engines annually.

by Kim Young-sae