The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [144]
When and why North Korea secretly launched its own program as a major enterprise is still the subject of speculation, in the absence of hard information. American experts believe site preparation for the first North Korean indigenous reactor, the one photographed by U.S. intelligence cameras in the spring of 1982, began around 1979. In the late 1970s, according to an official of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Kim Il Sung authorized the North Korean Academy of Sciences, the army, and the Ministry of Public Security to begin implementation of a nuclear weapons program, including rapid expansion of existing facilities at Yongbyon.
After a high-level delegation from the international department of the East German Communist Party visited Pyongyang in May 1981, it reported in a memorandum to its Politburo, "The DPRK is strongly interested in the importation of nuclear power stations. Here it is estimated that they do not by any means exclude the military use of the nuclear technology." A former East German official said the cautiously worded report, which was written after extensive informal talks with North Korean officials, seriously understated Pyongyang's ardor. "They said very frankly, `We need the atom bomb,' " according to this source.
North Korea's nuclear weapons program from the first was very self-reliant. Its "godfather" was Dr. Lee Sung Ki, a Korean born in the south who had earned his Ph.D. in engineering from Kyoto Imperial University in prewar Japan and served as dean of Seoul National University's college of engineering before crossing to the northern side during the Korean War. Lee, who became Kim Ii Sung's intimate friend and closest scientific adviser, had won worldwide fame by developing vinalon, a synthetic fiber made from coal. Other members of the core group of nuclear weapons designers are believed to have been two South Koreans who were the products of prewar Japanese educations in physics and chemistry, respectively, before crossing to the north, and two North Koreans who were trained in nuclear physics at Moscow University.
The indigenous nature of the program facilitated the extreme secretiveness in which it proceeded. Not even officials of the North Koreans' close allies, the Soviet Union and China-both nuclear weapons powers-were permitted to visit the key facilities at Yongbyon once the nuclear program was under way.
In the 1980s, in addition to its clandestine program, North Korea sought to obtain civil nuclear power stations from the Soviet Union to alleviate its growing power shortages. Kim Il Sung took up the subject with Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko in his May 1984 visit to Moscow and won agreement to additional talks on the subject. The United States, which was watching the developments in Yongbyon with growing apprehension, urged Moscow to persuade North Korea to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, hoping this would lead to international inspection and control of Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.
In December 1985, Moscow agreed to supply four light-water nuclear power reactors-the type the Soviets operated at Chernobyl in Ukraine-but only if North Korea would join the NPT. North Korea joined the treaty on December 12, and two weeks later the Soviet and North Korean prime ministers agreed in principle on the power reactor deal.
It is unclear what significance North Korean leaders placed on signing the NPT at the time, or what they expected its obligations would be, but it is unlikely that they understood the pressures that would eventually be brought to bear as a result of their adherence. Under the pact, North Korea agreed not to receive or manufacture nuclear weapons and to accept international inspection of all its