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South Korea Complies With NPT, Diplomat Says By Jim Wurst NEW YORK — Scientific research that produced a “trivial” amount of weapon-grade nuclear material “could be a technical violation, but not noncompliance” with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a South Korean diplomat said Thursday (see GSN, Oct. 6). South Korea recently revealed the unauthorized experiments performed in 1982 and 2000, under its Additional Protocol agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Chun Yung-woo, South Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations. This voluntary agreement goes beyond the NPT reporting requirements and requires signatories to report on all nuclear activities, whether or not they have any direct military connections. South Korea signed its protocol in 1999, and it went into force last February. “These reporting lapses do technically violate the safeguards agreement, but they do not violate the NPT” or the 1991 joint denuclearization agreement between South Korea and North Korea, Chun said in a speech at the Korea Society. Any violations “should be seen in the context of the spirit of the NPT and objectives of the IAEA” safeguards, he added. The denuclearization agreement prohibits both nations from possessing nuclear weapons as well as uranium enrichment or plutonium production facilities. Safeguards are meant to deal with “proliferation relevant” quantities of fissile materials, he said. “They are not intended to [account for] every milligram of nuclear material.” “The amount involved was too trivial to have any proliferation relevance,” Chun added. Chun said he was “most embarrassed” by the revelations because he was responsible for prompting South Korea to sign the Additional Protocol in the first place. It was reporting required under the protocol — not under the Nonproliferation Treaty itself — that revealed the experiments. He said there had been two experiments: one in the 1980s during which irradiated uranium fuel produced 86 milligrams of plutonium; followed by a process in 2000 that produced 200 milligrams of enriched uranium from natural uranium. South Korean officials have said the experiments were done without government authorization. These experiments “do not deserve the media attention they are getting. Why is there so much fuss about a seemingly harmless experiment?” Chun asked. He then answered his own question: because “it is proliferation sensitive technology.” As the country with the sixth-largest nuclear industry, South Korea “has a legitimate and compelling need” for fuel cycle research, including the construction of its own uranium enrichment plant. These experiments should be seen in the context of South Korea’s “fundamental right under [the] NPT to the peaceful use of nuclear energy,” he added. South Korea has 19 nuclear power plants and could have a total of 28 within a decade. Chun told Global Security Newswire yesterday that his comment Thursday about a “compelling need” did not imply that South Korea is preparing to renounce the 1991 agreement under which both North and South Korea promised not to build enrichment facilities. He said Seoul is “unilaterally abiding by” the agreement even though North Korea is “in material breach” of the pact and has never abided by it. While enrichment is “an imperative from an economic standpoint,” Chun said, “It is a remote possibility that no one is considering at this time.” His remarks at the Korea Society were meant “to underline the extraordinary lengths we are going to,” he said, to avoid suspicion that South Korea is laying the groundwork for a nuclear weapons program. These “scientific experiments” should not be compared to Iran or North Korea since the research “cannot be associated with weapons in any remote way because [of] the [small] quantity produced,” Chun said Thursday. “Without enrichment, without reprocessing we can never produce enough fissile material that can be used in a weapons program.” “Intentions are more important than capabilities,” he added. Sanctioning South Korea over this issue “will send a wrong message to those countries which have significant nuclear capabilities but are hesitant” to sign the Additional Protocol, such as Argentina and Brazil. “This would be a serious setback to the global nonproliferation regime,” Chun said.
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