N. Korea May Have Nuclear Backup Plan

The middle-aged woman didn’t attract any suspicion when she boarded China Air Flight 160 from Nagoya to Beijing.

Her inconspicuous nylon suitcase went through the baggage check and customs without incident on Nov. 20. Had it not been for the Japanese police, who had been investigating the woman and an associate for months, North Korea might well have acquired another component to build a nuclear bomb.

The suitcase contained an inverter, a 3-pound, $1,500 electrical device that controls the spinning of an appliance such as a washing machine or even a centrifuge. Intelligence agencies suspect that the part was headed for North Korea, which may indicate that Pyongyang is forging ahead with a nuclear program that uses centrifuges to enrich uranium for bombs.

“We’re almost certain [the inverter] was not intended to be used for a washing machine,” said Kiyo Kudo, a Yokohama police superintendent who is handling the case.

The woman, an ethnic Korean, and her business partner, were arrested in January on charges of violating Japan’s export-control laws. They are to stand trial March 10 in Yokohama. The inverter was returned to Japan from China.

This week, representatives from six nations converge on Beijing for a summit aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons development. Although Pyongyang has signaled it is ready to shut down a large complex that produces weapons-grade plutonium in return for economic aid and security guarantees, the U.S. suspects that North Korea has an ace up its sleeve -- a highly enriched uranium program.

U.S. officials say North Korea admitted during talks in October 2002 that it had a program to enrich uranium but has since denied making such an admission.

“The story about the ‘enriched uranium program’ much touted by the U.S. is nothing but a whopping lie,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

The Bush administration says the North’s denials threaten the entire negotiating process, which also involves South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

“You can’t reach the issue of complete dismantlement, let alone verification, if they don’t admit that it exists,” John R. Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control, told reporters last week in Tokyo.

Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan recently admitted selling North Korea, along with Iran and Libya, instructions and prototypes for building a highly enriched uranium program.

Among parties to the six-country talks, there is much disagreement about how far along the North Koreans are with their uranium program. The Chinese have told U.S. diplomats they are not convinced that the program exists, while South Koreans believe it is only in an experimental stage.

The problem for U.S. intelligence is that the uranium program is thought to be hidden away in North Korea’s vast labyrinth of caves and tunnels, unseen by the prying eyes of aerial surveillance. As a result, intelligence agencies have had to piece together how much progress the North Koreans may have made by examining the components they’ve bought on the open market. It is, in effect, like solving a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces scattered across the globe.

The inverter is only one of many such pieces.

Li Yong Sun, 52, the ethnic Korean charged with smuggling the inverter, is the sister-in-law of a North Korean security official, according to Japanese police. For several years before her arrest, she had been working with a Japanese businessman, shipping consumer goods like toothbrushes, underwear and snack foods to North Korea.

Last summer, Yoshifumi Yoshihara, 44, applied to Japanese customs to include the electric inverter in a shipment of other goods going from Yokohama to North Korea, but permission was denied because of the device’s potential military use, according to police. Police charge that the pair then arranged for Li to slip the inverter into her suitcase on a flight to Beijing, where they allegedly intended to send it on to Pyongyang.

Kim Sung Sik, a Tokyo-based lawyer for the defendants, said the part was intended for an industrial washing machine.

A U.S. military source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said sarcastically, “I’ve never heard anything about North Korea having a domestic washing-machine industry.”

While the U.S. hopes the case bolsters its claim that North Korea is persisting with the uranium program, others are less sure.

“The inverter case is very tricky. There are a number of different uses for inverters. It may not be possible to determine whether it was intended for missiles or a centrifuge or something entirely different,” said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Moreover, Samore said the case -- along with several others in which potential weapon components had been intercepted -- suggests that “North Korea might still have a long way to go in their highly enriched uranium program.”

CIA Sounds Warning

A CIA fact sheet distributed to Congress in November 2002 said the agency had recently obtained “clear evidence indicating that the North had begun constructing a centrifuge facility” and that the plant could be operational “as soon as mid-decade.”

The U.S. told allies last summer that its intelligence services believed the North Korean highly enriched uranium facility was 18 months away from producing the fissile material for a bomb.

But Samore and many other analysts believe that estimate is overreaching.

“We think the U.S. claims are a little exaggerated, not as much as with Iraq, but still we have to be careful of what the U.S. says,” said an Asian diplomat, who asked not to be identified.

North Korea has abundant natural uranium -- about 26 million tons, according to a geological survey done in the early 20th century. Pakistan, which sold it the uranium enrichment technology, has been one of the best customers for North Korean missiles.

“It appears there was a quid pro quo -- highly enriched uranium technology for missile technology,” said an intelligence source who spoke on the condition he not be named.

Nuclear Starter Kit

The assistance provided by Khan apparently was like a do-it-yourself kit: samples of uranium hexafluoride gas used in the process, blueprints, technical data and centrifuges that Pakistan developed from a design Khan had stolen from a Dutch company he worked at in the 1970s.

But nuclear experts believe Khan gave North Korea only enough centrifuges to use as prototypes, whereas at least 2,000 are required to build a highly enriched uranium factory.

“This is the type of technology they cannot produce on their own. They have to go buy various things for these centrifuges like baffles and bellows, inverters, rotors and casings, and many of them are subject to export controls,” said Fred McGoldrick, a retired State Department official with decades of experience in nuclear nonproliferation.

Japan has long been North Korea’s shopping mall of choice when it comes to military components. It has the advantages of proximity, advanced technology and a large population of ethnic Koreans, many with family ties to the North or to the pro-Pyongyang General Assn. of Korean Residents in Japan.

One company, Meishin Electric, last year was caught shipping three electronic devices known as direct-current stabilizers to North Korea through an intermediary in Thailand. Japanese investigators found that the end user was to be Daesong General Trading Corp., a military procurement company that is believed to report to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Meishin’s president, Kim Hak Chun, pleaded guilty this month to export violations and was sentenced to one year in prison and three years’ probation. His company was fined $18,400.

Japan cracked down on exports to North Korea in April 2002 and recently has become an active player in President Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative, which calls for increased efforts to intercept weapons of mass destruction or their components headed to “rogue” nations. As a result, North Korea has been doing much of its shopping in Europe.

The biggest bust was made in April of last year, when French and German authorities intercepted a French cargo ship, the Ville de Virgo, in the eastern Mediterranean. It was carrying, among other goods, 214 aluminum tubes in the precise dimension needed for the outer casings of a centrifuge known as the G2.

As in Asia, investigators uncovered signs of a sophisticated procurement network. The aluminum tubing purchase was allegedly arranged by a North Korean diplomat stationed in Austria, according to sources. The North Koreans also own Golden Star Bank in Vienna, which has been involved in purchases of technology.

Still, skeptics say that even the interception of the aluminum tubes shows that the North hasn’t gotten very far with a nuclear program.

“I don’t see the smoking gun,” says David Albright, a physicist and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank. “It has been known for years that they have a research and development program with centrifuges and that was somewhat tolerated. But the really important thing is whether they have made the jump from R&D; to a plant that could make a bomb or more a year, and there really isn’t as much evidence as one would think to support that.”

The American military source concedes there is no incontrovertible evidence.

“But when you see how much money the North Koreans have spent on these materials over the years, when they have so little money to spend, you have enough grounds for a reasonable conviction about what they are after.”

Hisasko Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.