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Nuclear deception by South Korea – ignored by the West

Iran never enriched uranium at a level that could only represent an interest in nuclear weapons – but South Korea did.

South Korea let off for nuclear deceptions Wasatch Economics by Gareth Porter posted by rosethorn on December 26, 2009 In 2004, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that a member state had violated its Safeguards Agreement by carrying out covert uranium conversion and enrichment activities and plutonium experiments for more than two decades. The nature of some of those enrichment activities, moreover, raised legitimate suspicions of interest in a nuclear weapons program.The state was found to have lied to the IAEA even when the authority began investigating these suspicious activities, with the country concerned claiming that its laser enrichment research did not involve any use of nuclear material.If that sounds like a description of Iran’s troubled relationship with the IAEA up to 2004, that’s because it bears striking resemblance to it. In fact, it is a description of the deception of the IAEA by the government of South Korea.

There was just one major difference between the South Korean and Iranian cases: Iran never enriched uranium at a level that could only represent an interest in nuclear weapons – but South Korea did.

Yet the IAEA treated Iran as a state to be investigated indefinitely, after failing to give South Korea even a slap on the wrist.

Even more remarkable is the fact that the two cases were the subject of IAEA reports issued within the same week in November 2004.

Three months before the report on its nuclear activities was published, South Korea admitted to doing everything in violation of its Safeguards Agreement that Iran was found to have done up to 2003………………

“Not only did they have an undeclared uranium-enrichment program, but they were actually making something close to bomb-grade, so you have to conclude someone wanted to develop a capability to make nuclear weapons,” said David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security after the Korean violations were revealed.

Despite covert activities that could only be reasonably interpreted as evidence of an intention to develop nuclear weapons, however, Seoul was given what amounted to a free pass.

After its August 2004 confidential admission to its covert activities, South Korea mounted an aggressive diplomatic offensive, aimed at avoiding any legal consequences………………

nuclear physicists working in the Korean nuclear program, who had been recruited by the CIA, had reported in the mid-1970s that South Korea was carrying out a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

The stark contrast between the treatment of the Iranian and South Korean cases by the IAEA Secretariat and its Board of Governors is the most dramatic evidence of a politically motivated nuclear double standard practiced by the agency and its Governing Board, dominated by the United States.

And as the episode showed, that double standard essentially reflected the political-military interests of the US government.

South Korea covert nuclear activity- worse than Iran « Wasatch Economics

December 27, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, South Korea | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons