Letter to the editor: North Korean Nuclear Risk

Ford, G. (2001). Letter to the editor: North Korean Nuclear Risk, International Herald Tribune, 16 March. DOI: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/IHT-north-korean-nuclear-risk-letters-to-the-editor.html?searchResultPosition=2

Regarding the report “U.S. Doubts Rise on North Korean Deal to Build Nuclear Reactors” (Feb. 26):

I would like to add my doubts to those of the writer. The North Korean nuclear energy program, KEDO, is running late. The site for the nuclear plants due to come on stream in 2003 is desperately bare.

In 1994 the world came closer to a nuclear war than at anytime since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. At the last minute, former President Jimmy Carter intervened directly with the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, to pull the world back from the brink. The agreement signed in 1994 was a perfect technological fix to a political crisis.

However the fix has become unstuck. First the Americans, having brokered the deal, expected someone else to pick up the hefty $4.5 billion tab. Worse followed. Washington was at least supposed to stump up for the heavy fuel oil, but the Republicans who controlled Congress would not play or pay. It did little for North Korean belief in U.S. good faith to find, in the coldest months of the year, that the expected deliveries failed to materialize.

Neither a Bush presidency nor a Republican Congress is likely to dig into its pockets for North Korea. They would rather use them as a scapegoat for funding National Missile Defense and repay all those who contributed so generously to the $3 billion spent on America’s recent electoral farce.

Even if the KEDO budget were doubled, $9.0 billion would be a small price to pay to avoid a possible global economic, environmental and humanitarian tragedy.