S. Korea admits scientists enriched uranium

[Judi Lynn]

S. Korea admits scientists enriched uranium


David E. Sanger and William J. Broad
New York Times
Sept. 3, 2004 12:00 AM


The South Korean government has admitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency that a group of the country's nuclear scientists secretly produced a small amount of near-weapons-grade uranium, raising suspicions that the South may have attempted a secret program to counter North Korea's nuclear arsenal.

The revelation, made 11 days ago and disclosed by the agency on Thursday, could greatly complicate the confrontation with North Korea over its own nuclear weapons program. President Bush regularly calls for a "nuclear-free Korean Peninsula," and those calls have been endorsed by South Korea, one of Washington's closest Asian allies.

In a statement, the South Korean government said that the highly enriched uranium was produced by a group of rogue scientists in 2000, without the knowledge of the government. But many details of the effort, which was an apparent violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, remain murky, and the method the scientists used was so expensive that it is normally associated with government-directed weapons programs.
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According to international diplomats with knowledge of the South Korean disclosure, the government admitted to the experiment only after IAEA inspectors began asking pointed questions about a piece of equipment in a building in Taejon, a South Korean scientific center, that they had been barred from visiting. It was unclear how they had learned of the existence of the equipment.
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