N. Korea might get thermal plant instead

Rep. Kim Deog-Ryong of the Grand National Party on Monday asserted that in May the U.S. special envoy on Korean peace, Charles Kartman, and Jang Jae-Ryong, South Korean deputy foreign minister, met secretly to discuss replacing one of the light-water reactors now being built with a thermal power plant.

Kim told the National Assembly's Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee that as the work on atomic reactors has been slow, Seoul and Washington agreed to provide a thermal generating plant instead of a reactor to the North and that the South should supply electric power directly to the North.

Kim based his statements on an alleged six-page report titled "Results of Consultations with the Korea Energy Development Organization," which he clamed to be a third-class secret paper.

The United States proposed, according to the lawmaker, that a trilateral South Korea-U.S.-Japan consultative body be formed to work out the supply of additional shipments of heavy oil to the North to avert its economic burden of having to provide 500,000 tons of heavy oil annually over the coming several years as a result delayed construction of the light-water reactors.

When the Seoul government objected to the plan, the United States came up with the idea of offering a thermal power station and South Korea consented to it, Kim added.