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Within weeks of revealing for the first time that it has stocks of plutonium,
North Korea has opened the door to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Hans Blix, director-general of the agency, completed a tour of nuclear plants
in the country last week. Nuclear safeguards inspectors are expected to
follow his lead in the next few weeks.

The admission by the people’s republic that it has ‘small’ amounts of
plutonium was included in a list of nuclear resources handed to the IAEA
this month. Many Western intelligence analysts believe North Korea is close
to producing a nuclear weapon. Plutonium is used in such devices.

However, Choe Jong Sun, a spokesman for the atomic energy minister,
told visitors from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the
‘little bit’ of plutonium came from damaged fuel rods at a 5-megawatt reactor
at the Yongbyon nuclear site, 100 kilometres north of the capital, Pyongyang.
Choe would not give the exact quantity, but said it was ‘next to nothing’.
He added that the North did not possess facilities to reprocess spent fuel
to reclaim plutonium and uranium.

Blix, who visited Yongbyon, was told by government officials that reprocessing
was being developed and the resulting uranium and plutonium would be used
in future fast breeder reactors or for mixed oxide fuel.

Drawing up North Korea’s nuclear inventory was an essential first step
under the terms of a safeguards agreement with the IAEA signed in April.
The republic had resisted international inspection so long as its bitter
rival, South Korea, harboured nuclear warheads. South Korea announced last
December that all such weapons had been removed from its soil.

The inventory includes two nuclear power plants under construction,
of 50 megawatts and 200 megawatts, three 635-megawatt reactors, all at the
planning stage, two uranium mines, two plants for producing uranium concentrate
and laboratories researching reprocessing.

Pyongyang’s belated openness has done little to dispel suspicion in
Seoul. ‘Even when everything is open, we can’t rule out the possibility
that the North has a nuclear capability. It will leave the outside world
guessing, and this in itself will be an effective nuclear deterrent,’ says
Hang Sung Joo, professor of political science at the University of Seoul.

Last week, a South Korean government delegation claimed that the North’s
plutonium stocks had come from a pilot reprocessing plant. A spokesman for
the delegation, Lee Tong Pok, said that the North had recently finished
construction of a larger reprocessing plant. North Korean foreign ministry
official, Son Rap Un, said his country was putting its faith in the IAEA
inspections. ‘We have nothing to hide from any person,’ he said.