N. Korea Aid to Pakistan Raises Nuclear Fears

Amid the clamor that followed Pakistan’s nuclear tests last summer, the wife of a shadowy North Korean diplomat here was shot to death in her home.

The police filed no reports. The newspapers were silent. The husband, believed to be a key figure in North Korea’s secretive missile program, left the country.

Today, more than a year after the incident, the few Pakistani officials who will talk about the case say that Kim Sa Nae was killed by mistake, when a neighbor’s cook accidentally fired a shotgun he had borrowed from a guard.

“I spoke with our intelligence agencies, and they said it was an accident,” said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the head of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. “You Americans always try to put the blame on us.”

Other officials say the truth about Kim’s death is more sinister. Some familiar with the case say that she was killed on purpose--probably by her own government--because she was spilling secrets about North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs or because she was planning to defect.

“She was murdered,” said one, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Kim’s death has thrown new light on the military connection between Pakistan and North Korea--at a time when the Stalinist regime is reportedly planning to launch a long-range missile capable of hitting Alaska.

While U.S. officials believe that North Korea has provided crucial help to Pakistan’s missile program, the chief worry now is that economically troubled Pakistan may be tempted to pay for that help with secrets from its nuclear weapons laboratories.

That could give North Korea’s leaders nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them far beyond the country’s shores. Some experts believe that North Korean scientists may soon be able to assemble a nuclear bomb, and they are troubled by the country’s relationship with nuclear-capable--and nearly bankrupt--Pakistan.

“Pakistan has the bomb, wants North Korea’s missiles and doesn’t have any money,” said Henry Sokolski, an arms control expert in Washington. “North Korea has missiles and wants the bomb. That’s a prescription for trouble.”

Officials at the Pakistani Embassy in North Korea refused to discuss relations with Pakistan or Kim’s death. Pakistani officials have given repeated assurances that they will keep their nuclear secrets to themselves.

But some experts say they are worried. Pakistan’s economy is reeling toward collapse, and its nuclear technology is among its most valuable assets. Some say North Korean technicians are already working at the nuclear laboratories.

“It’s highly probable that North Koreans are in those labs,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In recent years, the North Korean government has emerged as one of the world’s most unpredictable regimes, relentlessly developing modern weaponry even as hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of its people die of starvation.

U.S. officials believe that North Korea has shipped missile components to several countries, including Iran and Libya, and that its relationship with Pakistan has helped aggravate the dangerous confrontation on the Indian subcontinent. In 1994, in a highly publicized deal with the U.S., North Korea’s leaders agreed to quit developing nuclear weapons--but many worry that they will renege on the promise.

Last year, North Korean leaders test-fired a medium-range missile that sailed over Japan. U.S. officials believe that North Korean leaders are preparing to test a long-range missile. Earlier this month, the North Korean leadership said it might be willing to delay the missile launch--if the price was right.

As U.S. officials ponder North Korea’s intentions, they have uncovered evidence of a continuing relationship with nuclear-capable Pakistan.

In June, Indian officials seized a North Korean cargo ship that they said was bound for a Pakistani port. The North Korean crew said they were ferrying water-purification equipment to the Joint Economic Development Corp. in Malta. Indian officials found that no such company existed. Inside the ship, the officials discovered 177 crates of blueprints, manuals, parts and machine tools for Scud missiles.

Pakistani officials said the ship was headed somewhere else.

U.S. officials believe that North Korean help has proved decisive in Pakistan’s bid to acquire missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads.

After Pakistan tested a medium-range ballistic missile in April 1998, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Pakistan’s Khan Research Laboratories and a North Korean company that allegedly shipped missile components to Pakistan. U.S. officials believe that the Pakistani missile, the Ghauri, was a carbon copy of a North Korean rocket known as the Nodong.

A month later, leaders in India, alarmed by the Pakistani missile test, conducted five underground nuclear explosions--and proclaimed their country a nuclear-armed state. Two weeks later, Pakistani leaders exploded six underground nuclear devices. The nuclear arms race in South Asia had begun in earnest.

A week after the last such Pakistani test, on June 8 last year, Kim--the wife of the North Korean diplomat--was killed in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Few details are known about her death, and Pakistani authorities do not appear eager to talk about it. On the diplomatic circuit, Kim was known for preparing delicious cold Korean noodles.

The night she was killed, neighbors reported hearing shots at her home, located in Islamabad’s most exclusive neighborhood. They also reported seeing uniformed Pakistani officials around her house afterward. A local newspaper ran a four-sentence story about the “mysterious murder” of a Korean diplomat--and nothing has appeared in any Pakistani newspaper since. When diplomats inquired about the killing in Islamabad, they were stonewalled.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Altaf Hussain, Islamabad’s senior superintendent of police, said when asked about Kim’s death.

Kim’s husband, Kang Thae Yun, is believed to be one of North Korea’s busiest arms dealers. In 1997, while living in Islamabad, Kang brokered a deal with an unidentified Russian company to bring “maraging steel” to Pakistan and North Korea, Western experts say. Maraging steel is a key component of missile bodies and nosecones. Kang is also suspected of arranging the delivery of North Korean missile components to Egypt.

According to diplomatic sources, Kang was the local director of the North Korean Mining Development Trading Corp., which U.S. officials believe is a front company for North Korean arms sales. This is the company that Washington sanctioned after the Pakistani missile test in April 1998.

Sources said technicians from Pakistan’s Khan laboratories frequented Kang’s home in Islamabad.

Khan, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons chief, lived in the same neighborhood. He says he did just one deal with Kang: the purchase of 200 SA-16 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles in the mid-1990s.

“We didn’t have enough of our own,” Khan said.

The missiles aren’t capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Khan says North Korea has provided no assistance to Pakistan’s missile program.

At the time of Kim’s death, according to diplomatic sources, North Korean planes were delivering missile components to Pakistan twice a month. The flights stopped in May last year, shortly before her death, they said.

Some experts said it would not be out of character for North Korea’s leaders to order the killing of one of their own citizens. Two years ago, a North Korean diplomat in Zambia said his government ordered him to kill his wife, who had fled to the South Korean Embassy. The diplomat, Lee Tae Yon, ended up defecting himself. According to knowledgeable sources, North Korean agents have killed defectors on at least four occasions.

“Considering their past behavior, it doesn’t seem beyond the North Koreans to kill one of their own,” said Joseph Bermudez, a North Korea expert in New York.

Khan, the Pakistani nuclear weapons chief, said he thought that the North Koreans were probably capable of developing a nuclear bomb on their own. Even so, he said, his government--no matter how economically desperate--would never turn over such secrets.

“Putting nuclear weapons in someone else’s hands could be quite disastrous,” he said.

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Filkins was recently on assignment in Islamabad.