The Dominion - North Korea

Sanctioning Nukes?

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:14:30 +0000

Canada's nuclear exports and the Korean conflict

Pierre Trudeau speaking in September 1981 at the installation of AECL's Wolsung-1 Candu reactor in Kyong Sang Province of South Korea.

Pierre Trudeau speaking in September 1981 at the installation of AECL's Wolsung-1 CANDU reactor in Kyongsang Province in South Korea. Canada has officially opposed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons -- most recently, press reports speculated that Canadian naval vessels could play a role in enforcing sanctions against the country. Little thought has been given, however, to the role Canada's nuclear industry has played in the development of North Korea's bomb.

Media coverage of North Korea's nuclear tests has left out the ongoing sales of nuclear technology to South Korea by Canadian firms. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has supplied four reactors to Seoul's Korea Electric Power Development Corporation since 1973.

CANDU reactors manufactured in Ontario's Chalk River and Pembroke, and then marketed internationally, are much more efficient producers of (potentially weapons-grade) plutonium than competing models. Irradiated CANDU fuel can be extracted from the reactor during everyday operation, a convenience not offered by competing models.

In his 1988 semi-official history of AECL, University of Toronto History Professor Robert Bothwell relates that Canada's Trudeau Cabinet secretly approved AECL's commercial export of CANDU nuclear reactors in 1973.

Negotiations then began for the sale of CANDU reactors to Seoul's Korea Electric Power Corporation, which led to South Korea's second commercial nuclear power installation.

"In South Korea, as in Argentina, the military was never very far in the background; unlike Argentina, South Korea was [economically ascendant]," Bothwell writes.

For North Korea, nuclear exports were part of a series of provocative maneuvers made by the US and South Korea. The Pyongyang government criticized CANDU exports to South Korea for lowering South Korea's nuclear weapons acquisition threshold.

Pierre Trudeau paid an official visit to the Wolsung CANDU site in South Korea in September 1981 and spurred negotiations for additional CANDU reactors at Wolsung.

Three additional AECL CANDU units entered commercial operation at Wolsung between 1997and 1999. These exports temporarily boosted the faltering Canadian nuclear industry. In the summer of 1999, Ontario Hydro announced the long-term shutdown of numerous CANDU reactors at two generating stations for safety and performance reasons.

In 1985, Toronto Star columnist Diane Francis castigated briberies discovered in CANDU marketing to South Korea, Turkey and elsewhere. Direct AECL agents received a "finder's fee" of three to 10 per cent of reactor contract value. AECL deposited 10 per cent into a Luxemburg bank trust account for the agent's country contact.

AECL also exported CANDU research reactors to India and Taiwan.

India cooked the plutonium for its May 1974 Rajasthan nuclear weapons test in an AECL research reactor, whose sale was facilitated by Pierre Trudeau in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"With large taxpayer support, CANDU reactors have been exported to South Korea, Argentina, India, Pakistan, Romania and China," says Lynn Jones, a health professional and activist based in Pembroke, Ontario. Jones represents Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, a group that campaigns against the health and nuclear proliferation risks of the nuclear industry in Pembroke and nearby Chalk River.

North Korea was distressed by delivery of proliferation-prone and risky nuclear equipment and technology into the hands of its rivals in Seoul. Officials in Pyongyang were also incensed at alleged US violations of Article 2d of the 27 July 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, which was no more than a temporary ceasefire.

In a January 2003 statement reprinted by the Marxist-Leninist Daily, the North Korean government argued that, "Since the beginning of 1995, such [US] nuclear war exercises as Foal Eagle 95, Hoguk 906, Rimpac 98, 98 Hwarang and Ulji Focu Lens have been held against the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] almost every day, every year, on the ground, on the sea and in all parts of South Korea. In February 1997, the US brought depleted uranium shells from its base in Okinawa, Japan, into South Korea and deployed them."

In other cases, Canada's nuclear exports have attracted more attention from the media.

In March 2006, the Globe and Mail reported that, "Watchdog cleared tritium shipment to Iran." Referring to the highly controversial Pembroke nuclear manufacturer SRB Technologies Canada, the Globe reported: "The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved a shipment to Iran last year by a Canadian company of about 70,000 glow-in-the-dark lights containing tritium, a radioactive gas that can also be used as a component in hydrogen bombs."

Martin Mittelstaedt, the author of the Globe report, told the CBC on December 5 that Foreign Affairs in Ottawa was "extremely nervous" at SRB Technology's shipments of dual-use tritium to Iran.

Commercial CANDU reactors breed tritium, which Lynn Jones says is an agent of irreversible genetic damage, cancer, immune suppression and other pathologies.

According to Jones, the Globe report was based on correspondence between SRB Technologies and the Safety Commission obtained by her NGO through an Access to Information request with the Commission.

Jones told The Dominion that her Access to Information records reveal Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approval of SRB's application on September 26, 2002, to export tritium-containing devices to "eight organizations in Korea."

Radiation-protection professional Rosalie Bertell, Biostatistician and retired President of the Toronto-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health, is one of many who oppose the proliferation of nuclear technology--in the North as in the South.

"After 50 years of US threats to use nuclear bombs in North Korea, and most recently calling them part of the 'axis of evil,' North Korea has joined the Asian nuclear club and holds South Korea and thousands of US military hostage to the same threat," said Bertell.

"We must disarm the five nuclear nations which started this competition in order to achieve global peace."

What role does Canada's nuclear industry play in the geopolitics of the Korean peninsula? Stephen Salaff investigates.

North Koreans Starving?

Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:59:00 +0000

While it has a million soldiers making up just one component of a robust military, its own satellite launching system and the ability to organize mass demonstrations on cue, North Korea is facing serious domestic problems with the coming winter.

In the North Korean Capital of Pyongyang, grocery stores have little merchandise for sale and there seems to be a lack of food generally. Elevators are without power across the country and there is scarce heating fuel available in a nation where the temperature drops to-20 Celsius.

Part of this is due the isolation that N. Korea has imposed on itself, part of it due to international ostracism from the state's refusal to adopt the capitalist economic system. The effects are now approaching a critical stage. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreas could freeze or starve before the upcoming winter is over. (Jane's Information Group, BBC, US State Dept.)

--LESLIE BUCKLE

International News Briefs

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 01:01:13 +0000

AIDS Relief on Back Burner

China, Russia, US Partners on North Korea

Fight Looms over EU Constitution

Taiwan Straits Report Alters Travel Plans

AIDS Relief on Back Burner

Just months after pledging $15 billion dollars in support, the Bush Administration seems to be losing its interest on the fight against HIV / AIDS in Africa. Little mention of the initiative is brought up at daily White House and State Department press briefings, where the declared War on Terrorism continues to occupy Washington.

According to recent statistics, almost 29 million of the 42 million people infected worldwide live in Africa. In South Africa alone, some 5 million people are either HIV or AIDS positive and hundreds die each day. Cemeteries are being overloaded with corpses as one funeral follows another.

On May 27th, President George Bush signed the H.R. 1298 US Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003. Some $15 billion had been pledged to fight disease but the Act ran into controversy when it was learned that as much as one third of the money was to be spent on abstinence-based prevention and faith-based organizations. Critics of the plan argue that the monies should be used to purchase Antiretroviral drugs and pursue similar initiatives. Others say that the Bush Administration should apply greater pressure on pharmaceutical companies to give up their monopolies and allow cheaper generic versions of the life prolonging, life saving drugs to be made available to those who can least afford them.

Michael Hunter

» Avert.org: Antiretroviral drug programs and initiatives
» US State Dept.: The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

* * *

China, Russia, US Partners on North Korea

Despite their many differences, the national governments of China, Russia and the United States have found common ground when dealing with the thorny issue of North Korea's nuclear capabilities. The Chinese and Russians have been instrumental in encouraging North Korea to accept multilateral, multinational discussions and now it would appear that their efforts have paid off.

On Friday, August 1st, 2003 North Korean government indicated it will accept such discussions, something the country has previously rejected preferring instead to have direct talks with Washington. Senior State Department Official John Bolton said the move was, "very encouraging". However, Bolton called the North's leader Kim Jong-Il a "tyrannical dictator" and warned that talks alone could not resolve the issue. One of the key issues is how to create a verifiable inspections program in one of the world's most secretive nations.

The crisis heated up in October of 2002 when the North withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (for nuclear weapons) and began reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium. Since then all UN Weapons Inspectors have been required to leave the country. (BBC, US State Dept., North Korean Government)

Michael Hunter

* * *

Fight Looms over EU Constitution

According to sources quoted by the BBC, the countries of Finland, Austria and Lithuania are set to fight Italy's desire to begin full Constitutional negotiations this October with an eye towards wrapping things up by the end of next year. All three nations insist that there is too much at stake for such a rushed timetable. Other issues that need to be addressed include the future role and power of the EU Presidency, as well as foreign policy and military alliances.

Kirsty Hughes, a senior fellow of the Center for European Policies in Brussels, argues that many of the smaller countries who joined the EU did so with the idea that they would get a chance to serve in the presidential capacity. The new proposal for a streamlined 15 member voting structure leaves it unclear how much influence the less populated countries will have. Meanwhile, Britain is concerned about mutual defense guarantees made outside of the NATO alliance and having to accept foreign policies that may be contrary to their individual needs and wishes.

Italy's Prime Minister Belusconi, who serves as the current president of the EU, promises "gentle violence" to ensure that no radical changes are made to the text of the Constitution as it now stands. (BBC)

Michael Hunter

» BBC: Call for more constitution debate
» BBC: EU constitution battles loom

* * *

Taiwan Straits Report Alters Travel Plans

Just days after the US Department of Defense reported to Congress on the state of China-Taiwan relations, a planned US trip by Taiwanese Vice President Annette Lu is said to be up in the air. Lu had planned to travel to the United States later this month and stop in four cities including New York. However, according to reports filed by the Washington Post, the New York visit has been scrubbed and the other stops are in jeopardy. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said he was "not aware" of any plans to block the visit.

The controversy follows close on the heels of the FY99 Appropriations Bill Report which noted China was increasing its readiness and ability to take back what China considers to be the renegade province. The report highlighted Beijing's plans to emphasize a campaign of "surprise, deception and shock" against Taiwan. The US Defense Department estimates that China plans to spend as much as $65 billion to purchase long range missiles and other equipment which would assist a military incursion.

The report to Congress has been required under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) since April 10, 1979. At that time the Congress established the Act and its subsequent reports in order to demonstrate US commitment to Taiwan's state security. The US has angered the Chinese national government many times since 1949 by placing American warships in the Taiwan Straits in order to deter an aggressive takeover of the runaway province. Past reports have noted concern over the ease with which Chinese Nationals can obtain visas to the United States and the relative ease with which they are allowed to travel once in the country.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian said that "the Government will press ahead to cast off the diplomatic isolation Beijing has imposed". Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations in 1971 and its place was given to the People's Republic of China. (Washington Times, US Dept. of Defense)

Leslie Buckle

» Richard Bush: The US role in the Taiwan Straits issue
» US Department of Defense: The Security Situation in the Taiwan Straight
» Washington Times: Taiwan's vice president cancels stopover in New York