South Korean president offers nuclear technology to North Korea

South Korean president offers nuclear technology to North Korea

SEOUL (AFP): President Kim Young-sam said yesterday South Korea was ready to help North Korea with sensitive nuclear power generation, saying the project could become the first joint venture of the new "Korean community."

"The Korean people cannot live divided forever. We must pool all our national determination and energies," he said in a nationwide speech on the 49th anniversary of the end of Japanese colonial rule over Korea.

"If and when the North guarantees the transparency of its nuclear activities, we are ready to support their development of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, including light-water nuclear reactor construction, by providing them with the necessary capital and technology," Kim said.

He said the program could become "the first joint project for national development," leading to the establishment of a "single community of the Korean people."

Kim's statement came amid South Korean maneuvers to have its own interests reflected in the results of U.S.-North Korea talks aimed at solving disputes over the North's suspected nuclear weapons program.

After serial talks in Geneva, U.S. and North Korean officials issued a statement on Saturday on steps agreed to end the North's drawn-out nuclear stand-off against the international community.

The four-point agreement calls on Washington to seek diplomatic ties with the North and to help provide light-water- moderated reactors to replace its graphite reactors as a way to stem weapons-grade plutonium production.

South Korean press reports, quoting unidentified South Korean officials, have said North Korea had tacitly agreed in talks with Washington to accept South Korean-made light-water reactors.

North Korea, whose nuclear program is based on Russian technology, is understood to have indicated earlier that it preferred Russian reactors to South Korean.

South Korea has been pitching to have its own reactors selected.

Complaints

Analysts here said South Korea had argued that its reactors should be used to assuage complaints among hardliners here that Washington has been going too fast in talks with Pyongyang.

South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo apparently had these complaints in mind when he said Sunday that North Korea would not be given light-water reactors unless it first accounted for its past nuclear activities and revealed the amount of its plutonium stockpile.

In contrast to the conciliatory tone over the nuclear issue, Kim Young-sam reaffirmed South Korea's unification formula envisioning a phased merger, stressing that Korea must be unified under a democratic formula.

"The Cold War is finally leaving the Korean peninsula ... the competition between the South and the North over which can create a better society has already been decided," he said.

Kim criticized the North's unification idea, saying: "Unification should be grounded on the values of freedom, democracy and well-being for all, rather than on any ideology focused narrowly on a specific class or group."

Pyongyang's Chungang Bangsong radio said North Koreans attending a conference on unification dismissed the Southern unification formula as a rehash of that of past military "fascist" regimes in Seoul.