North aide says defector was only minor scientist

BEIJING ― A North Korean nuclear scientist who defected to the United States last year was not a particularly important figure, a senior North Korean source here said yesterday.
The linked defections of the U.S.-trained nuclear scientist Kyong Won-ha and a number of military officials, organized privately by nationals of several nations, was reported over the weekend, and Dr. Kyong was described as a central figure in the North Korean nuclear program.
“North Korean authorities discovered Dr. Kyong’s disappearance during the second half of last year,” the North Korean source said. “As far as Pyeongyang knows, Dr. Kyong is already in the United States, helped by an Asian-American in China.”
But the source said that Dr. Kyong was involved only with lesser technologies during the early stages of North Korea’s nuclear development. “He is not one who had core information about North Korea’s nuclear programs as the report described,” the source said, adding that Pyeongyang, therefore, had not paid much attention to the scientist’s movements in China.
A 1994 report by the International Strategic Studies Association, however, refers to Dr. Kyong as one of the key scientists and engineers behind North Korea’s reactor in Yeongbyeon and its configuration into a source of plutonium.
The source in Beijing was also skeptical about the other defectors. The Weekend Australian reported that some 20 senior military officials had defected with Dr. Kyong, but the source said low-ranking officials and North Korean civilians had exaggerated their own importance.
China, however, was sensitive about defections through its territory of North Koreans to the United States. Identity check-ups in the northeastern region have been reinforced, the source added.
An American lawyer, identified as Philip Gagner, 53, was reported to have been deeply involved in the defections, but he was not reachable yesterday. An international law specialist at the Washington-based firm of Shaughnessy, Volzer and Gagner, Mr. Gagner was involved in negotiations between Washington and the government of Nauru. The island nation in the South Pacific reportedly provided diplomatic cover for the North Korean asylum-seekers.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the defections, saying that it knew about the incident only through news reports.
The Weekend Australian reported that 11 countries had supported the operation, but Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Sunday denied the Australian government’s involvement. He said the defections had been arranged and carried out entirely by American and New Zealand civilians.
The New Zealand government also denied involvement in the defections, but Kinza Clodumar, a member of Nauru’s parliament, said the New Zealand government had promised to pay $1 million to induce Nauru to participate in the operations. The payment was duly remitted, Mr. Clodumar said, implying that New Zealand was a part of a multinational operation to sneak the North Koreans out of China.
Dr. Kyong settled in Chuncheon, Gangwon province, after the Korean War, sources confirmed yesterday. From 1956 to 1965 he lectured in mathematics at the then Chuncheon Agricultural College, the predecessor of Kangwon National University.
A former professor who studied mathematics with Dr. Kyong remembered the North Korean scientist as an extraordinary lecturer.
“There were rumors that his career was not going well because he had graduated from the Kim Il Sung University in the North,” the 64-year-old former professor recalled.
The university’s documents recorded that Dr. Kyong, an associate professor of statistics, left the school to study in Brazil in 1965.
Dr. Kyong reportedly worked in a nuclear-weapons program at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the early 1970s and later taught at Canada’s McGill University. In about 1974, he reportedly moved to North Korea.

by Yoo Kwang-jong