Verbal Battle Over North Korea’s Nuclear Arms Will Reappear After 16 Months

One of the watching points regarding the second Six Nations conference is the reunion between James Kelly, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Kim Ke-kuan, the deputy prime minister of the North Korea foreign office.

On October 3, 2002, these two men attacked and defended each other around the North Korea nuclear arms program issue, in the first conference room of the North Korea foreign office located in Pyongyang.

At that time, exhibiting a list of materials for manufacturing concentrated nuclear fuel uranium and a dispatch note, Kelly forced Kim to admit North Korea’s nuclear arms program. Kim, meanwhile, responded as “there is nothing like that in North Korea.” Accordingly, the atmosphere of the dinner party was frigid.

The day after, North Korea, however, boasted through Kang Suk-ju, the first deputy prime minister, that “we have better weapons than that (uranium weapon).” In response to the official announcement of the U.S., “North Korea admitted its nuclear arms program.”, however, North Korea denied this, calling it a made-up story by the U.S.

Sixteen months after that, Kelly and Kim seems to engage in a verbal battle again, with the same topic. Some people consider that North Korea’s replacement of Kim as conference representative is for another consistent re-denial of the uranium program.

To two senatorial aides on a visit to a reactor and reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon, Kim claimed, “we don’t have any equipment or technical specialist knowledge (not for plutonium but for uranium).”

Seung-Ryun Kim srkim@donga.com