DPRK Forum

The fresh round of talks restarted in China, and while it is said they are very close, nobody signed the dotted line yet. When that will happen is another thing altogether, so it is still more “hurry up and wait”. When dealing with North Korea, this is always the case anyhow.

Meanwhile, with regard to suspicions that it has a secret uranium enrichment, North Korea reportedly admitted to importing about 150 tons of hard aluminum pipes, a material for a centrifugal separator, from Russia in the past. The pipes can be used to make some 2,600 centrifugal separators for the enrichment of uranium, a South Korean government official said.

North Korea disclosed this in Washington-Pyongyang working talks on normalizing bilateral relations in Geneva early this month. But it did not say whether it had actually used the pipes to make centrifuges and enrich uranium. North Korea will reportedly deal with this issue during the process of its declaration of nuclear programs.

A South Korean government official said, “Despite North Korea’s admission that it imported aluminum pipes, we can’t yet say it has made (weapons-grade) enriched uranium with the pipes. Many other components are also needed to make centrifugal separators.”

However, Russia denies the charges, but it seems there was some stuttering:

“I have not heard about this and believe it was unlikely to happen,” the Russian deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.

“I can say with absolute confidence that we had no such deals of late,” he said advising “to address to the information’s authors.”

Some buzzwords for you there. Whatever the case, South Korea also says the supposed Syrian ties will not hurt the process, and while I agree it is not a problem up to now, but if any hard evidence comes down the pike, there might be problems. Both Syria and Israel still remain numb. Also, DPRK Studies has an interesting transcript, and has nothing to do with Syria:

QUESTION: Just out of interest, this company that appeared in the Federal Register, to whom was it transferring missile technology?

MR. CASEY: I –

QUESTION: It wasn’t Syria, for example?

MR. CASEY: No, it was not — your real question is: Is this related to previous news accounts of a variety of things related to Syria?

QUESTION: Oh, no, no, no. I wasn’t implying that.

MR. CASEY: No. No.

QUESTION: So who are they transferring bad stuff to?

MR. CASEY: You know, I’ll leave it to the experts to give you a little more information on that. We generally don’t discuss the specifics. But in the interest of clarity, I will assure you that it is not Syria.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. CASEY: Yeah.

Heh, if you read it, it sure looks like Syria, but it is not. I guessed Iran, and looking around the news, looks that way:

Although Casey did not give specifics, he said the suspected North Korean missile transfers in this case did not involve Syria. The listing in the Federal Register included two companies from Iran in the sanctions notification. They are Aerospace Industries Organization and Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group.

But what are these companies? Let’s see what Google says:

Aerospace Industries Organization

Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group

Ahh that’s what they are. What the details are, and what went on in the past is unknown to me at this point, but if we look at the press conference again:

MR. CASEY: Oh, I believe that there was a notice published in the Federal Register today that formally announced what we talked about over the last few days, which is that a North Korean company for, I believe, the third or fourth time, has been sanctioned for missile technology transfers. These are, again, measures that have already been applied both to North Korea and to this company, and done so over the course of quite a few years. So the net effect of these sanctions is really no change in the existing status here. But again, it has been published in the Register and it’s an indication, once again, of the serious concerns that exist about behavior by North Korean entities with respect to these kinds of technology transfers.
I think it, as you’ve heard us say before, also reinforces the idea of why we wish to move forward in the six-party talks with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We certainly don’t want North Korea or anyone else to be proliferating these kinds of technologies. And part of what we’re doing in the six-party talks is working through the kinds of issues that are there so that we can end North Korean proliferation activities as well as their onsite, in-country nuclear program.

Alright, so what does the Federal Register say? I cannot seem to find it. Does anybody have a copy of it? I am kind of interested in it. Not that I do not believe the reports, I like to see the sources. I’ll look more for it. If I find it, I’ll post it. If somebody posts it, I’ll post too. See, it is all good.

Oh and in other news, Roh is going to see the Mass Games. Well, maybe he will. Activists are not happy. I am not too thrilled either:

“The sight of the two Korean leaders seated side by side at one stadium to watch the Arirang Festival would send a message of peace across the world,” South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung was quoted as saying on Friday by Yonhap news agency.

No, it looks really crappy, and I think I am going to barf in my trashcan.