--- FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 18:23:59 +1000
> Subject: [globenet] 4 Items on South Korea Uranium
> Enrichment
>
> 1) The New York Times Sept 7 2004 South Korean
> Scientist Calls
> Uranium Test 'Academic'
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> September 7, 2004
>
> South Korean Scientist Calls Uranium Test
> 'Academic'
>
> *By JAMES BROOKE*
>
> TAEJON, South Korea, Sept. 6 - South Korea's
> enrichment of a "minuscule"
> amount of uranium was a one-time "academic test"
> tacked on to other,
> unrelated laser experiments and intended to get more
> mileage from
> contaminated equipment intended for the scrap heap,
> the president of the
> South Korean government's nuclear research
> institute, said in an
> interview here on Monday.
>
> "When they said they wanted to do this research, I
> said go ahead," said
> Chang In Soon, president of the Korean Atomic Energy
> Research Institute,
> part of the Ministry of Science and Technology. "But
> I said, do it fast
> and scrap it straight away afterward."
>
> The enrichment, in January 2000, apparently violated
> several treaties
> aimed at keeping the Korean peninsula free of
> nuclear weapons and
> weapons-grade fuel. Disclosures of the experiment
> prompted an intensive
> inspection here last week by the International
> Atomic Energy Agency.
> Inspectors left over the weekend carrying back to
> their base in Vienna a
> sample of the enriched uranium.
>
> "I knew there was an international agreement, but it
> was such a
> small-scale experiment, I didn't think it would be a
> problem," said Dr.
> Chang, a chemist by training. "Then, we scrapped the
> equipment
> afterward. If we had ambitions, why would we scrap
> the equipment?"
>
> The equipment, he continued, is unusable because of
> radioactive
> contamination and is stored in a protective vault on
> the institute's
> parklike campus.
>
> At the time of the experiment, Dr. Chang said, he
> was informed that the
> enrichment level went only to 10 percent, slightly
> above levels in South
> Korea's nuclear power plants. Reports from Vienna
> last week talked of
> enrichment levels reaching 80 percent. A preliminary
> report should be
> ready in Vienna in about 10 days.
>
> Speaking in Korean through an interpreter, Dr. Chang
> blamed "the crude
> curiosity of the research scientists" for the
> enrichment.
>
> "I am responsible for everything; I cannot blame the
> researchers," he
> said. "To be frank, our researchers are not that
> aware of the
> international accords. It was such a small-scale
> experiment that I
> believed it was O.K. to allow it."
>
> Under an I.A.E.A. inspection protocol ratified by
> the South Korean
> National Assembly in February, Seoul had until
> mid-August to give to the
> United Nations agency a detailed report on nuclear
> research. Dr. Chang
> said that when he reported the enrichment experiment
> to his superiors at
> the Ministry of Science and Technology in June,
> "they were dumbfounded."
>
> He declined to identify the researchers or to make
> them available for
> interviews, adding, "They would just say what I have
> been saying."
>
> He did say they were in their 30's and 40's, not
> members of "the Park
> Chung Hee generation."
>
> In the 1970's, the second half of Mr. Park's
> presidency, South Korea
> reportedly embarked on a secret attempt to make a
> nuclear bomb. Dr.
> Chang, who took over the institute here in April
> 1999, said he believed
> that the bomb project had never gone beyond the
> talking stage.
>
> On Monday, he said his institute is open to
> inspections by the
> International Atomic Energy Agency "any time, any
> place."
>
> In the tense atmosphere of the divided Korean
> peninsula, the enrichment
> project's biggest impact may be to undermine the
> effort to persuade
> North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, an
> effort intended to avoid
> a regional nuclear arms race.
>
> "From a technical and scientific perspective, it's
> no big deal, and
> South Korea acquired no significant quantity of
> enriched uranium," said
> Peter Hayes, an Australian antinuclear activist who
> extensively
> researched South Korea's nuclear bomb program of the
> 1970's. Then,
> listing the treaties the experiment may have
> violated, he added, "But,
> politically and legally, it's an enormous
> embarrassment."
>
> Looking ahead to the next round of regional talks on
> North Korea's
> nuclear program, Mr. Hayes said the enrichment
> experiment here at Taejon
> had given North Korea "a ready-made, high-caliber
> projectile to counter
> the U.S. and its allies at the six-party talks."
>
> In the region, commentators fear that the experiment
> will provide a
> propaganda chip to the North, which is run by a
> secretive,
> ultranationalist government that clings to nuclear
> weapons as its core
> defense against the United States.
>
> "Seoul's production of highly enriched uranium may
> come as a windfall to
> Pyongyang, providing it with a lever to change the
> tide of the talks in
> its favor," the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's
> largest-selling conservative
> newspaper, said in its lead editorial on Sunday.
>
> The Monday issue of Korea Times editorialized: "No
> matter how the North
> reacts to the experiment, the government needs to
> strengthen its watch
> on nuclear-related activities and strictly observe
> the global nuclear
> protocols."
>
> Many Koreans have noted that in 1991 South Korea
> agreed with North Korea
> to forgo acquiring uranium enrichment and
> reprocessing. With the
> exception of the experiment here, South Korea has
> kept up its side of
> the bargain. In contrast, North Korea has embarked
> on a nuclear weapons
> program.
>
> For South Korea, there is an economic cost. It must
> import the fuel to
> power its 19 nuclear power plants, the source of 40
> percent of its
> electricity. It costs South Korea about $370 million
> a year to import
> enriched uranium.
>
> "It is a huge loss for Korea not to be able to
> reprocess and enrich
> uranium," Kim Tae Woo, a researcher at the Korea
> Institute for Defense
> Analyses, a part of the National Defense Ministry,
> said in an interview.
> "South Korea has been over-cooperating with the
> international community.
> The U.S. and other members of the international
> community know this, so
> they will not criticize Korean experimenters on
> this."
>
> "If the international community criticizes South
> Korea, Korean experts
> would be outraged," the researcher concluded.
>
> In January 2003, North Korea expelled I.A.E.A.
> inspectors, declared that
> it was quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
> and then announced
> that it was reprocessing spent fuel rods to obtain
> plutonium for nuclear
> weapons.
>
> As punishment, the United States, Japan, South Korea
> and the European
> Union voted last year to suspend construction of two
> nuclear reactors in
> North Korea. On Monday, the South Korean unification
> minister, Chung
> Dong Young, told reporters that the suspension would
> probably be
> extended for a year more.
>
> "The project is linked with the resolution of North
> Korea's nuclear
> issue, and it is inevitable to extend the suspension
> of the project for
> one more year,'' the minister said, referring to an
> October board
> meeting of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development
> Organization, the
> agency set up to oversee the 1995 accord under which
> North Korea agreed
> to freeze and dismantle its nuclear program.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2) TIME 13 Sept 2004 Awkward Fallout Seoul's
> admission of nuclear
> experiments raises uncomfortable questions
>
> BY DONALD MACINTYRE | SEOUL
>
> Four years ago, a handful of scientists at a
> government-run South Korean
> nuclear research institute were experimenting with a
> gun that blasts
> laser beams at elements like gadolinium. The
> experiments weren't
> successful and the scientists decided to dismantle
> the equipment. But
> before they did, somebody suggested using the laser
> to enrich uranium?a
> process that produces the fuel for one type of
> nuclear bomb. "Scientists
> are full of curiosity," explains Chang In Soon,
> president of the Korea
> Atomic Energy Research Institute, where the
> experiment took place.
> "They're interested in this kind of thing."
>
> That unlikely tale was Seoul's explanation last week
> for the startling
> news that its scientists had been caught enriching
> uranium?the very
> activity Washington is trying to get North Korea to
> halt. (Pyongyang
> also has a plutonium-based weapons program, the
> focus of continuing
> six-nation negotiations.) South Korea foreswore its
> nuclear weapons
> program in 1975, and has since been under the
> inspection regime of the
> Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
> Last February, the
> government signed a protocol giving the IAEA the
> right to more
> information and to inspect sites anywhere in the
> country. Seoul had six
> months to make a full declaration of its nuclear
> research, and the IAEA
> started asking uncomfortable questions about the
> institute in Daejon.
>
> On Thursday, a Science and Technology Ministry
> spokesman admitted that
> scientists there produced 0.2 grams of enriched
> uranium in 2000. (At
> least 10 kilos are needed to fuel a weapon.) Late
> last week, the
> government said it wasn't sure whether it had
> violated its
> nonproliferation commitments.
>
> There is no evidence that Seoul is trying to go
> nuclear, but the
> revelation couldn't have come at a more awkward
> time. "This incident is
> extremely unhelpful and damaging," says a Western
> diplomat in Vienna. He
> says Seoul must be dealt with sternly or countries
> like North Korea and
> Iran might reasonably object that they've been
> unfairly vilified for
> developing their own nuclear programs. Not
> surprisingly, Seoul is in
> serious spin mode. Across the DMZ, North Korea's Kim
> Jong Il must be
> enjoying a quiet chuckle at its expense.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 3) Washington Post 8 September 2004 - S. Korean
> Official Attempts to
> Ease Nuclear Concerns*
>
> By Anthony Faiola
> Washington Post Foreign Service
> Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A20
>
> TAEJON, South Korea, Sept. 8 -- South Korea's top
> nuclear energy
> official on Tuesday denied claims that scientists in
> his country had
> produced near-bomb-grade uranium, seeking to ease
> concern that the
> previously undisclosed experiments were in apparent
> violation of
> international law.
>
> "Yes, we did enrich uranium, but an amount so small
> it was almost
> invisible and to levels that were not close" to
> weapons grade, Chang In
> Soon, president of the government Korean Atomic
> Energy Research
> Institute, said in an interview. "This was an
> academic exercise, nothing
> more. We have no ambition beyond science. Any
> suggestion to the contrary
> is wrong."
>
> His description of the experiments appeared to be at
> odds with testimony
> that South Korean officials are said to have
> provided last week to the
> International Atomic Energy Agency. Diplomats
> familiar with the
> testimony said the South Korean officials had
> reported that they
> enriched uranium to levels of almost 80 percent --
> close to those used
> in nuclear weapons and far above the single-digit
> levels typically used
> in nuclear energy production.
>
> Chang, however, insisted there had been a
> "misunderstanding." He said
> the three tests had yielded an average enrichment
> level of only 10
> percent -- with the highest levels not exceeding the
> average by a large
> amount. Diplomats familiar with the case, however,
> said they preferred
> to await the results of IAEA testing.
>
> Chang said he personally authorized the experiments
> -- a costly
> procedure that employs a laser to isolate certain
> uranium isotopes -- in
> January and February of 2000. The Seoul government
> reported the
> experiments to the IAEA last week.
>
> The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires that
> signatories report
> any uranium-enrichment activities to the IAEA
> immediately. Not doing so
> is considered a serious violation. The IAEA, which
> is based in Vienna,
> dispatched a team to South Korea last week.
> Investigators collected half
> of the uranium that had been enriched -- about 100
> milligrams -- and the
> IAEA said complete analysis was expected to take at
> least a month.
>
> Several pounds of highly enriched uranium are
> required to build a bomb,
> according to experts. "If we had wanted to do it, we
> could have done it
> in another, more efficient way," Chang said. "But
> that wasn't our goal."
>
> Even if South Korea is found to have enriched
> uranium to relatively low
> levels, the Seoul government may still face
> problems.
>
> "On the surface, it appears to be a violation no
> matter what the
> enrichment level was," said a Vienna-based diplomat
> familiar with the
> matter. "But the consequences have a range,
> depending on what is found."
>
> Officials at South Korea's Foreign Ministry said
> other high-ranking
> government officials were informed of the
> experiments in February by
> Chang, adding that the tests were not
> "government-sanctioned." But they
> deferred to Chang on the details of the experiments,
> which they
> reiterated had been quickly halted. Neither Chang
> nor the researchers
> involved had been disciplined, the officials said.
>
> Chang said he chose to inform his superiors after
> reviewing an IAEA
> protocol adopted by the Seoul government this year
> that, according to
> his interpretation, had called for a higher level of
> accountability at
> South Korean nuclear facilities.
>
> Chang said he authorized the tests after five South
> Korean scientists --
> all of whom received their doctorates in the United
> States and who
> worked at the sprawling campus here 110 miles south
> of Seoul --
> approached him for permission to enrich uranium.
> They were interested,
> he said, in "seeing what they could as scientists"
> with the institute's
> high-tech lasers and related equipment, all of which
> Chang said was
> about to scrapped. "As a scientist myself, I could
> not say no to them,"
> he said.
>
> "And I did not think this was a violation," he said.
> "This was such a
> small amount."
>
> The case could complicate six-party negotiations
> over North Korean
> nuclear plans, as well as U.S. demands that the
> Iranian government
> disclose hidden portions of its nuclear programs.
>
> The public and news media in South Korea, an
> important U.S. ally, have
> largely rallied around their scientists, with most
> newspapers condemning
> what was being portrayed here as an overreaction to
> the South Korean
> experiments. The country gets 40 percent of its
> power from nuclear
> energy but so far has refrained from enriching
> uranium itself, instead
> importing enriched uranium from the United States,
> Russia and elsewhere
> to feed its 19 nuclear power plants.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 4) Seattle Times 8Sept2004 Until all nuclear
> nations disarm, others
> will lust after same power
>
>
> *Tom Plate / Syndicated columnist
> * *Until all nuclear nations disarm, others will
> lust after same power*
>
> **
> //
>
> LOS ANGELES ? Fundamentally, as they tend to say in
> particle physics,
> the big brouhaha over the secret South Korean
> uranium enrichment
> experiment is an absurdity.
>
> After all, the amount of fissionable material
> produced at the national
> laboratory ? as currently reported ? was trivial: It
> was about as
> big-time weapons-grade in the sense of a paper
> airplane requesting 747
> landing rights at Kimpo Airport. The whole flap is
> curious in the extreme.
>
> Seoul voluntarily reported the unauthorized
> experiment to international
> authorities, and that should be the end of it. But
> all sorts of
> unhelpful parties in the region may want to use the
> errant experiment
> for their own purposes. North Koreans may say that
> the clandestine South
> Korean program puts both Koreas in a plane of moral
> equivalency. It
> doesn't: South Korea is a far more transparent
> society, and thus the
> North Korean nuclear program is far more worrisome.
>
> Some Japanese circles may want to point to the Seoul
> admission as
> further evidence that the Land of the Rising Sun
> needs to get cracking
> and develop its own nuclear-weapons program. That
> would be the worst
> development imaginable for peace and security.
>
> And China, rightly pushing its Six-Party Talks aimed
> at denuclearizing
> the Korean peninsula, may point to the revelation as
> reason for more
> urgent diplomacy; but nothing substantive will
> happen until after the
> U.S. elections.
>
> How did the flap start? At the end of the day, the
> origins of the
> illicit experiment will probably be traceable to
> South Korean nuclear
> scientists who did a bit of lab toying-around on
> their own. Such amoral
> conduct would easily track with that of other
> scientists elsewhere who
> tend to take matters into their own hands and act as
> if they are above
> the law. Basically, brilliant scientists tend to
> believe they are really
> not like you and me, that a special set of rules
> governs them, and that
> they can do as they please. It's called the God
> complex. But this
> above-the-law attitude creates problems for national
> governments and new
> international tensions that need to be smoothed
> away.
>
> The revelation also reminds us that any state that
> has the steel will to
> want a nuclear capability (whether subterranean or
> otherwise) will
> proceed apace, no matter what anyone else says.
> South Korea appears not
> to be in that category, but then there is the
> question of Iran and
> Pakistan. It is U.S. policy ? as well as the policy
> of the other four
> permanent members of the U.N. Security Council ? to
> seek to stymie the
> increase in the number of nuclear powers, on the
> entirely plausible
> ground that fewer is better. But, then again, as
> India might put it, it
> is easy to take this line when one already possesses
> such weapons than
> when one is on the outside looking in at the comfy
> nuclear club
> luxuriating in its high moral line.
>
> The ideal number of nuclear powers would be zero, of
> course. But until
> and unless the United States ? along with China,
> Russia, France and
> Great Britain ? agrees to stuff the nuclear genie
> back in the bottle by
> advancing nuclear disarmament by leadership example,
> others will
> continually be tempted to lust after nuclear
> potency, too.
>
> Even so, the danger the world faces is not so much
> from direct nuclear
> exchange between nuclear states that are in control
> of their militaries
> as well as their mental facilities. Rather, as famed
> theoretical
> physicist Norman Dombey puts it in the current
> London Review of Books,
> "It follows that the international community should
> focus on the weak
> link in the non-proliferation regime: that's to say,
> states which
> possess nuclear weapons and are not fully in control
> of their territory
> or of their citizens." Seen from this analytical
> perspective, therefore,
> nothing on the Korean peninsula ? north or south ?
> is anything as
> worrisome as Pakistan, against which since 9/11 the
> U.S. has had to
> snuggle up ally-style.
>
> The U.S. ? the only nation-state to have used such
> weapons in combat ?
> thus is somewhat responsible for developments there,
> and it is also
> morally culpable for relying on nuclear weapons as a
> core part of its
> military arsenal. "We call upon the citizens of the
> United States to
> look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that
> have unfolded in the
> wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago," wrote
> Iccho Itoh, mayor of
> Nagasaki, in the Nagasaki Peace Declaration for the
> 59th anniversary of
> the atomic destruction of his city. "So long as the
> world's leading
> superpower fails to change its posture of dependence
> on nuclear weapons,
> it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation
> cannot be stemmed."
>
> Nagasaki's mayor is right. This is the bottom line
> on nuclear
> proliferation. We need a world free from nuclear
> weapons; and so we need
> a re-moralized United States to take the lead and
> bequeath planet Earth
> a fate free of nuclear holocaust. Some kind of
> future nuclear tragedy
> would seem probable in the absence of transcendent
> American renunciation.
>
> /UCLA professor Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific
> Council on
> International Policy, is the founder of the Asia
> Pacific Media Network
> (www.asiamedia.ucla.edu
> <http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu>). His column
> appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. /
Do you Yahoo!?
www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
