Nuclear Deal for N. Korea Bears Fruit

KUMHO, North Korea — In a rare project to sow peace on the tense Korean peninsula, officials from North Korea, South Korea, Japan and the United States broke ground today for two nuclear power plants for energy-starved North Korea.

The multinational project is the fruit of a hard-won 1994 deal under which North Korea agreed to halt its nuclear bomb program in exchange for the construction of two 1,000-megawatt light-water nuclear reactors here in Kumho, on North Korea’s isolated northeast coast.

More than 100 officials and journalists from nine countries and the European Union arrived at the North Korean port of Yanghwa early this morning aboard the South Korean ship Hannara, whose name has the dual meaning of “Big Country” and “One Country.”

In the gray drizzle, a small fishing boat bobbed in Hannara’s wake. The three fishermen aboard hauled in their nets and waved and smiled to the unusual assemblage of strange faces and movie cameras on the decks above them.

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The warm welcome was indicative of the working relationship that diplomats in the foreign entourage say is developing between the two heavily armed adversaries.

“When they have military training, they are taught the other man is their enemy, but when they meet they do not feel this way,” said Eduardo Jara Roncati, Chile’s ambassador to South Korea.

The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, project has gone forward despite clashes between South and North Korean troops along the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries, and despite the not-very-cold war of propaganda and posturing, espionage and defections that continues between the implacable enemies.

Even the infiltration of a North Korean submarine into South Korean waters last fall did not derail the reactor program, although it delayed implementation. Thus, though controversial, KEDO has become a symbol of how a multinational organization charged with performing a practical task can succeed amid one of the most intractable political disputes on the globe.

The groundbreaking sends the message that “for the North Koreans, dealing with the West works,” Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in Tokyo last week. “We’ve kept our word, South Korea’s kept their word, Japan’s kept their word.”

“We are not doing this to help the North Koreans,” said Stephen Bosworth, KEDO’s American executive director. “We are doing this as our part of the bargain.”

Briefing journalists aboard the Hannara, Bosworth said the United States had contributed $80 million to $90 million to KEDO over the past 2 1/2 years, and the Clinton administration plans to request an additional $30 million from Congress for KEDO in fiscal 1998. “That is not an insignificant amount of money, but when you measure it against what we gain, it is a bargain,” Bosworth said.

A U.S.-led consortium that includes Japan and South Korea will build the two reactors in North Korea, provide 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually until the power plants begin generating, and oversee safe storage and eventual removal of 8,000 spent fuel rods from the reclusive nation’s 25-megawatt experimental reactor at Yongbyon.

The new reactors will take as many as 10 years to build and cost $5 billion, most of which South Korea has agreed to pay.

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“We are going to send hundreds of people over there and they are going to work with their North Korean counterparts for years to come,” said Chang Sun Sup, South Korea’s top representative to KEDO. “This will provide a unique opportunity for us to have some reconciliation and build mutual trust. This is a kind of test or touchstone to [indicate whether] the divided two Koreas can work together.”

Saying he was born in the North, Chang added: “This is returning to my native land after more than 50 years.”

The site of the planned reactors will give him little opportunity to meet North Koreans, said KEDO officials who have been there. Visitors to the site are strictly monitored and contacts with residents rare.

Even the Hannara’s route was indicative of the mutual suspicion between the two sides: After sailing out of South Korea’s Tonghae harbor and into international waters, the ship made a sharp turn and headed for Yanghwa, avoiding the appearance of having come directly from South Korea. And the South Korean flag was lowered and ceremonially folded as the vessel made its approach toward North Korea on flat gray seas.

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It was near Tonghae harbor that the North Korean submarine came ashore last year, in an incursion that left scores dead on both sides and delayed the KEDO project until North Korea apologized.

“KEDO does not exist in a political vacuum,” Bosworth said. “Things could [still] happen on the Korean peninsula.”

Nevertheless, Akio Suda, deputy director general of Japan’s Foreign Ministry, praised the “wisdom” of the United States in concluding the reactor agreement in 1994: “Without KEDO, we cannot imagine what would be the situation in this area.”

Bosworth and other officials stressed that negotiations with the North Koreans are sure to remain difficult, but they noted that Pyongyang is complying with KEDO conditions.

The North Koreans view KEDO not only as a means to gain electricity but also as a “window to the outside world,” he said.

Under the agreement signed in Geneva in October 1994, North Korea has pledged to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, to conduct special inspections of all its nuclear facilities to determine that it has not hidden any plutonium that could be used to build a bomb. U.S. officials have said they suspect North Korea might have secreted away fissionable materials.

Before KEDO puts the vital reactor cores in the plants at Kumho, the IAEA must give North Korea a clean nuclear bill of health. “They have to come clean before they get the guts of the reactors,” said Joel S. Wit, deputy director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the U.S. State Department. “If they don’t come clean, they get a concrete building and that’s it.”

Bosworth said the negotiations have been difficult because of the North’s deep isolation, legacy of mistrust and feelings of vulnerability. “North Korea is a country that is tremendously isolated from the international community,” he said. “It does not feel it has friends; it has not wanted friends.”

The North seems torn between its need to engage with the outside world and its fear of the implications of that engagement, Bosworth said. He rejected suggestions that North Korea has cooperated with KEDO out of desperation, saying instead that it has calculated that joining was in its long-term interests.

One diplomatic source, who asked not to be named, said the North Koreans seem to be questioning their postwar foreign policy. The source characterized the feelings of the North Korean officials as: “Gee, we made a big mistake after the war, becoming buddies with the Russians, because look what we ended up with and look what the South ended up with.”

“They’re thinking: How do we get out of this mess we’ve landed in?” said the source.

Richardson said he believes that the KEDO program is an incentive for the North Koreans to participate in four-party negotiations aimed at an eventual formal peace treaty to replace the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. Those talks, involving North and South Korea, China and the United States, have been fitful and so far inconclusive.

Most of the construction and other labor on the KEDO project will be performed by North and South Koreans. “That South Koreans and North Koreans are cooperating on this project means we are laying a cornerstone toward building peace on the Korean peninsula,” said Hwang Ha Soo, director general of South Korea’s Office of Planning for the Light Water Reactor Project. “So this is a historic event.”

Negotiations on such vital details as quasi-diplomatic immunity for foreigners working in North Korea, insurance, medical treatment, finance and transportation were anything but smooth, according to Hwang, and were completed only last month.

The first team of 67 South Korean construction workers arrived in Kumho on July 26 for a year tour.

The workers are restricted to a small area surrounding their guest house, which was originally built for Soviet workers who were once expected to build a reactor there, Hwang said. Living conditions are expected to improve once they build themselves a new dormitory and recreation center, Hwang said.

“I get the impression that they [the North] badly need this, not only for the electricity it will provide but also because of the wages for North Korean workers and other income from the project,” he added.

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At the peak of construction on the two reactors, the project will employ about 7,000 workers--two-thirds of them North Koreans, Hwang said. The project could bring the North Koreans at least several million dollars a year and possibly up to $10 million annually, he said.

The project also will have an enormous technical payoff for South Korea, which will end up with the latest U.S. nuclear plant technologies and become an exporter of nuclear power plants for the first time, said Yonsei University political science professor Chung In Moon.

Times staff writer David Holley in Tokyo contributed to this report.