U.S. visitors optimistic about North Korea

The former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory said Saturday that North Korea is serious about denuclearizing and is willing to contemplate a program such as that used to help former Soviet republics destroy their nuclear weapons.

“This is a big deal,” said Siegfried Hecker, referring to North Korea’s accomplishments so far in shutting down its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

Hecker, a professor at Stanford University, had returned earlier in the day from a four-day trip to North Korea, where he said he enjoyed “remarkable access” to North Korea’s nuclear facilities.

Hecker compared the high-security compound he visited in North Korea to the national security research institution in Los Alamos, N.M. He said he observed an exceptional working relationship between North Korean technicians and U.S. teams supervising the dismantling of a nuclear reactor, a factory to make nuclear fuel rods and a reprocessing plant, which was used to make weapons-grade plutonium.

“My feeling coming away from this visit is that the level of cooperation is good, better than I’ve seen in the 10 years I’ve been visiting the facility,” said Joel Wit, a former State Department official who traveled with Hecker.

The men acknowledged that serious political problems remain. North Korean officials they met in Pyongyang, the capital, said they would not complete the dismantlement of Yongbyon until the U.S. completes the delivery of promised heavy-fuel oil and, more important, removes North Korea from an official list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The Bush administration has said it is prepared to remove North Korea from the list, but only when it completes its end of the bargain.

“You have a problem about who goes first. At this point, that’s unresolved,” Hecker said.

Hecker and Wit, along with a Senate aide, traveled to North Korea in an unofficial capacity. Their discussions were devoted mostly to the mechanisms for permanently closing North Korea’s nuclear facilities and finding new jobs for the thousands of people employed in the nuclear industry.

They talked with the North Koreans about a program launched in 1991 under which the United States has spent about $400 million annually helping Russia and other former Soviet republics destroy weapons.

Developed in the 1960s, the Yongbyon facility is similar to the Soviet nuclear compounds.

“It is essentially a small city with apartment buildings, schools, stores,” Wit said.

Both men said that North Korea remained interested in civilian use of nuclear power and probably would press again for foreign assistance building a light-water nuclear reactor. A deal was signed in 1994 for the United States to help build such a reactor, but the agreement collapsed.

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barbara.demick@latimes.com