Images published yesterday by ISIS show fresh construction adjacent to North Korea’s old 5-megawatt reactor, the one that eventually became the exclusive focus of two failed agreed frameworks.
For comparison, here’s an image of the same reactor from February 17, 2007, coincidentally just days after the second agreed framework was signed.
The cooling tower in the image was blown up in ceremonial spectacle for the media, and some of the equipment inside the main reactor building (on the right) was dismantled, but then, some have opined that the old reactor was crumbling anyway. Subsequent reports claim that the Yongbyon reprocessing plant was later restored to its pre-AF II condition, and it’s reasonable to infer that the North Koreans might have tried to do the same at the reactor.
It’s interesting that the new construction is happening at this site, rather than at the nearby 50-megawatt reactor that was once reported by the Washington Post to be just two years from completion. Certainly these images do not suggest that that is the case, although we obviously can’t see under the roof. Also interesting is that the ISIS report doesn’t suggest that the North Koreans are building a replacement cooling tower. Instead, it seems to focus on the possibility that this will be an entirely new, light-water reactor. Significantly, light-water reactors are fueled by low-enriched uranium. The existence of a secret, parallel North Korean uranium was a matter of ferocious debate in Washington until, to the embarrassment of some, it wasn’t.
The new reactor, or at least the apparent construction of one, may be little more than cover for an extensive uranium enrichment program, since we presumably won’t be able to verify the degree of enrichment. Uranium must be highly enriched before it can be used in a nuclear (but not a radiological) weapon. A new reactor allows the North Koreans to claim that its uranium enrichment program is for the generation of electricity, which is exactly what it said about its plutonium program back in the early 1990’s.
More satellite images of North Korea’s nuclear facilities here.
In other news this week, if you can call it that, the IAEA has finally gotten around to saying that the site the Israelis bombed in the Syrian desert in 2007 was a nuclear reactor. After the attack, Congress requested a briefing, and the CIA presented this video presenting evidence that the North Koreans had given the Syrians extensive assistance in designing and building the reactor:
The IAEA is now contemplating referring Syria to the Security Council. It will be interesting to see if there are consequences for North Korea too, given that their assistance to Syria is far more dangerous and provocative than their own domestic nuclear tests. It will be equally interesting to see how far China will be willing to go to block effective U.N. action.
Buried within the latest AP report on Jimmy Carter’s visit to North Korea was this wonderful morsel:
Carter said North Korean officials expressed deep regret for the deaths on the South Korean warship Cheonan and for the civilians killed in the island shelling. But, he said, it was clear that “they will not publicly apologize and admit culpability for the Cheonan incident.” North Korea denies sinking the ship, despite an South Korea-led international investigation that blamed the country. It says it was provoked into the island shelling by South Korean live fire drills.
No, they didn’t intend to apologize … until the awesome global stature of Jimmy Carter and his Superfriends ™ forced Kim Jong Il to grant them a personal audience-cum-intervention, where Kim tearfully apologized for starving, torturing, or terrorizing virtually everything in reach and agreed to check himself into rehab.
Just kidding! Actually, Kim snubbed Carter again and sent his Foreign Minister and the head of his rubber-stamp parliament to repeat their standard demands — a North-South summit without apologies or preconditions, and “[T]hey won’t give up their nuclear program without some kind of” vague, ill-defined, vanishing “security guarantee from the U.S.” That’s pretty much what the North Koreans said before Agreed Framework II, which of course brought us to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program one crumbling cooling tower, plus numerous diplomatic and material gains for North Korea. Really, though, the smothering irony of this entire story has to be that Carter and his admirers hold him out as an expert on dealing with North Korea because of Agreed Framework I, a triumph so smashing that Carter is still begging the North Koreans to disarm 17 years later.
Carter must have been especially disappointed that Kim didn’t even tell his minions to release his newest American hostage, a pity given the perfect convenience of seizing a hostage just in time for Carter’s arrival. There is, of course, the pity of that plea from the man’s family that he’s in ill health. In spite of this, another AP correspondent (here, the unforgivably experienced Foster Klug) calls Carter “well-respected” by the North Koreans, notwithstanding the fact that we now know just what the North Koreans really think of Jimmy Carter. But even the most reasonable inferences that Klug could have drawn from his own report tell us that much.
When asked why the North Koreans didn’t meet with His Most Highly Regarded Excellency, Carter replied that the South Korean President wouldn’t meet with him, either. Could it be that the South Korean government regards Carter just as highly as the North Korean government regards him? Or that Carter’s visit has unwittingly revealed a sliver of common ground between the Koreas?
“We don’t question the decision of a head of state about the priorities they set for their own schedule,” Carter said.
Among other priorities, this particular head of state is known for his world-class collection of Daffy Duck cartoons and the lethality of his prison camp system.
A final fallacy about North Korea is again refuted in this story. The American diplomatic class and its fan-boys would have us believe that North Korea’s diplomatic Lotharios only manage to outmaneuver America’s best and brightest so consistently through their fiendish cleverness. I incline to the view that North Korean diplomacy isn’t fiendishly clever, it’s just usually less incompetent than ours. Conceding guilt for sinking the Cheonan without apologizing for it isn’t clever. For North Korea, it’s the worst of everything. It gets no credit for contrition, and yet it refutes and embarrasses its sympathizers from Seoul to New York. A more clever North Korea would either apologize for a payoff or stick to denial, but one could just as easily say that a more clever North Korea would be South Korea.
I seldom find myself agreeing with the North Koreans on much, but it gives me strange comfort to find that they share my contempt for America’s worst ex-president:
In a memoir about her months as a prisoner in North Korea, Ling records that North Korean officials were infuriated by her suggestion that Carter be enlisted as the high-profile American to come retrieve her. They viewed Carter as washed-up and out of office for too long — a retread unfit to grace a photo-op dignifying Kim Jong Il. “Carter, Carter, Carter!” one official told her. “You have upset many people by asking for Carter.” They held out instead for the bigger prize of a visit by Bill Clinton. [Claudia Rosett]
Kum-ba-ya!
I suppose I can’t fault the AP’s Christopher Bodeen for not having read Laura Ling’s memoir of her fool’s errand in North Korea, but I can fault him for taking Pyongyang’s party line at face value when he writes:
Carter is well-regarded in North Korea and met in 1994 with the North’s then-leader Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s father, and brokered a U.S.-North Korea nuclear deal.
You have to wonder what basis Bodeen could possibly have to reach and report this opinion within an opinion. It seems fairer to infer that the North Koreans regard Carter as a reliable tool. After all, Carter is a consistent advocate of policies that abet the regime’s goals, one who never demands the moderation of its ruthlessness. In this, Carter is joined by a coterie of fellow has-beens, including Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for refugees Human Rights. Robinson is mostly remembered for criticisms implying that Iraqis would be better off living under Saddam Hussein’s tender mercies — and I wonder how many Iraqis would agree with that now? — but even more than this, Robinson deserves to be remembered for having, as far as I can tell, not uttered a single unpleasant word about North Korea’s prison camps or its selective starvation of its population during her entire tenure.
At Monday’s briefing, Carter also criticized long-standing economic sanctions imposed on the North’s hardline communist regime, saying they were adding to suffering among ordinary citizens amid a severe drop-off in food aid to the North.
“In almost any case when there are sanctions against an entire people, the people suffer the most and the leaders suffer least,” he said. “And we believe that the last 50 years of deprivation of the North Korean people to adequate access to trade and commerce has been very damaging to their economy, as well as some problems they may have brought on by themselves.”
But the sanctions aren’t against the “entire people.” Neither Carter nor Bodeen reveal the slightest hint of having actually examined the U.S. and U.N. sanctions that have been imposed since 2006 (they’re linked in my sidebar). They are tightly targeted at Kim Jong Il’s proliferation, money laundering, and his squandering on obscene extravagances money that ought to be spent on food. The sanctions specifically exempt humanitarian assistance. As Carter should know, North Korea’s people starved for years before these sanctions were imposed, including after President Clinton relaxed most sanctions on bilateral trade. And if sanctions were really starving North Koreans, then why is Kim Jong Il dodging them to buy not food but “94 Swiss watches for about US$200 each early this year,” Clapton concerts and “extravagant lifestyles” for its “princelings,” and an alleged “long convoy of lorries believed to be carrying gifts for North Korea’s elite?” Kim Jong Il even found a spare $500,000 to donate to his dwindling cadre of sympathizers in Japan. These, by the way, are just the examples I’ve noted in the last two months. I could cite many others. Given this sampling of evidence, just what resources does Kim Jong Il lack that we’re now morally compelled to provide?
And given North Korea’s general aversion to transparency, just whose needs would our aid really meet? Some reports from inside North Korea suggest that most people aren’t that much worse off than they’ve been for the last decade. To the extent that they are, the primary cause is the regime’s confiscation of savings from millions of North Koreans, and the impact that confiscation had on the markets that keep 80% of them alive. One thing that does appear to be different this year is the increasing equality of misery among all but the most privileged of the North Korean elite. This year, more than in the past, soldiers and residents of Pyongyang are going hungry, too, and that presents a threat to things Kim Jong Il really does care about — his job security and his survival. That may explain his regime’s sudden desperation. The corruption and embezzlement of its ruling class have reached the unacceptable point where they’re diverting too much food from those who ensure the regime’s stability.
Carter overlooks these questions, seemingly out of an emotional compulsion to transfer culpability to America. But how, exactly, can Jimmy Carter overcome Kim Jong Il’s desperation to keep his people ignorant, exhausted, and hungry?
Posted by Joshua on April 21, 2011 at 7:57 pm · Filed under Robert Park
Despite my rather complex views of Mr. Park, one can say that keeping these issues in the public eye means something good coming of his ill-advised actions. At least now, people should disregard that televised “confession” of his. Speaking of North Korea and hostage negotiations, don’t miss Claudia Rosett’s revelations about what the North Koreans really think of Jimmy Carter.
Oh, and a Japanese newspaper is reporting that the North Koreans have arrested two Japanese on drug charges.
Seriously. What part of “stay the hell out of North Korea” can’t people understand?
Updated: Updated the schedule and fixed a link below.
For those of you who haven’t been checking the NK Freedom Coalition website on a near daily basis of late to get the greatly updated schedule for North Korea Freedom Week, it’s finally out!
One thing that’s very interesting, and I’ll leave it to Joshua or Chris to comment on, the list of sponsors:
The Ministry of Unification; the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; the City of Seoul; various newspapers and TV stations.
See below the fold for the schedule. And welcome to Chris and (sort of) welcome back to Joshua.
Ah, one final note — as this is really long already, I didn’t copy the list of organizations and chairmen below; see the original links for that.
Kucinich, the Congressgnome from Middle Earth, has made a few appearances in this blog for being the main congressional backer of Christine Ahn’s National Campaign to End the Korean War. Anyway, it disappoints me to see Kucinich nudged out of Congress by non-democratic means, whether those means involve redistricting or commitment proceedings. I feel cheated, somehow.
In other useful idiocy news, I see that John Feffer is reduced to drawing moral equivalence between the Workers’ Paradise and those brigandish Yankees. Oh, he’s going to hear about this on his next visit to Pyongyang for sure:
The international community is rightly aghast at North Korea for spending a fortune on its military when its populace is suffering. Nearly one quarter of North Korea’s population is either starving or at risk of starvation, according to a recent UN report, yet its government pours money into missile and nuclear programs. Such behavior seems to be the height of irrationality. [….]
But the most irrational country of all has been the United States, which was responsible for more than one-third of all military spending and 95 percent of the global increase in military expenditures last year. This remarkable news comes at a time of unprecedented budget deficits and a veritable fever of budget cutting on Capitol Hill.
Yes, the most irrational of all! Why, just yesterday I had to elbow my way past flocks of starving waifs to get into the KFC for a double-down. I don’t know if this my own glass-half-full spin, but for Feffer, this actually represents progress.
My hiatus will continue for a while longer. Thanks for your good wishes. I’m fine, and the family is fine — I’m just busy with other things. Maybe when time permits I’ll start posting on the weekends. Fortunately, the North Koreans haven’t given us much to talk about recently, although I suspect we’re at the beginning of another provocation cycle. The most interesting news has been happening in Libya and Syria. Watch our response in Libya in particular. Despite the obvious differences in the regimes’ military capabilities, that looks like a plausible template for a future crisis in North Korea.
While we don’t know any of the details, and so my resigned sigh might turn out to have been unfair, I cannot say it surprised me this morning to learn that there are still American citizens capable of getting themselves arrested in and around North Korea despite this, this and this, not to mention this, and it will surprise me even less should I find that the North Koreans use it as a way to try and undercut the ongoing U.S.-South Korean official policy of skepticism as to Pyongyang’s motivations.
On the bright side, while the probability is that this individual will spend a few months in jail, he or she may get lucky; after all, the last one, Aijalon Gomes, was rescued by Jimmy Carter, and he has already booked his ticket…
As an aside, I’d just like to point out that when General Walter Sharp and I last competed on the running track (Yongsan Army Base 5km, quite the event let me tell you) I beat him hands down. I’m not sure he knows, to be honest. Regardless, perhaps because he feels it is the only way to get through to some people, Gen. Sharp has been telling it like it is to the Senate Armed Services Committee;
McCain: Can you envision a scenario in which the North Korean regime is willing to give up its nuclear weapons capability?
Sharp: Sir, not without a whole bunch of pressure from, really, everyone around the globe. North Korea I think has clearly said that they are developing this nuclear capability, I think it is clear that Kim Jong Il believes he has to have it for regime survival; I don’t believe that to be true, but it will take people convincing him that the regime is not at risk. To answer your question directly, no, I don’t see it that he will give up his nuclear capability.
Can’t say he wasn’t clear.
Elsewhere, North Korea’s current domestic policy in the northern provinces seems to be taking shape as one of stopping the inflow of information come what may. Evidence that people found to have contacted the outside are being exiled internally is growing, the details of which can be found here, while the execution of people for economic crimes is, if true, not a good sign. In the breathless words of one North Korean source;
The politics of violence has become a reign of terror.
Meanwhile, it is often the relatively smaller things more than the big ones that make me think North Korea is a country fundamentally opposed to playing by the rules.
On the very much more positive side, I hope this website of anti-Kim cartoons has experienced an upsurge in hits of late, for it would be nothing less than its owner, and his collaborator, deserve.
I would have enjoyed writing about how Jimmy Carter is highly unlikely to help anyone by going to North Korea, how he will be used by the Kim Jong-il regime for its own propaganda purposes, about how, since he has little to no chance of extracting a message of remorse from the North for the killing of innocent civilians on Yeonpyeong Island, he is only likely to burnish his own reputation as a man of peace but without any tangible results… but then the man who sits behind me got there first.
But that does at least free up some time to talk about Park Jie Won, who has conveniently dispensed with any semblance of anger at North Korea’s killing of 50 of his own people in the last year to say that anti-Kim Jong Il leafleting should stop because it will “only cause harm to the economy of northern Gyeonggi Province and the Gangwon area.”
And, finally, here is something else I am having trouble computing;
LP: We have to remember that the Korean War, which began in 1950, was never concluded with a proper peace agreement. Since then, both halves of Korea live in constant fear of resuming hostilities. National military service in the DPRK is mandatory and very long (up to 10 years in the Army and Air Force and even longer in the Navy). More than 1.1 million young men and women serve in the KPA without salary or wages and rely on the daily rations of free food, uniform and regiment accommodation. Many more millions are ready to be conscripted and work at government-assigned projects according to national needs. In North Korea, the Army and the People are inseparable, and by feeding the Army, the North Korean regime simply maintains the traditional food distribution system. The KPA receives, stores, protects and consumes a certain proportion of international humanitarian aid. There is no other government agency in North Korea that could do this better or more efficiently than the Army.
To which the only remaining sentence is surely, “So if the Army takes the aid and feeds soldiers, that’s alright with me.”
Which is surely going to quite hard to justify the next time those soldiers are used to shell civilians on a South Korean island or some such. Or perhaps that will turn out to be acceptable too, because “the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island was clearly provoked by the South Korean side…”
Oh yeah, and I say to you that Kim Jong Eun was never supposed to play a part in the Supreme People’s Assembly, for the following reasons.
