North Korea “Not Interested in Surprising Compensation for Nuclear Dismantlement”

During the U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s visit to South Korea on July 12, North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Han Sung-ryol turned down Rice’s proposition, “If North Korea earnestly dismantles its nuclear program, there will be a ‘surprising compensation,” by answering, “We are not interested.”

Through a phone interview with Yonhap News, in relation to National Security Advisor Rice’s proposal, Deputy Ambassador Han flatly rejected the proposal by stating, “The U.S. offer of ‘nuclear dismantlement first, compensation later’ is not a new issue,” and repeatedly claimed that, “We have been consistently asking for a simultaneous parallelism (of nuclear abandonment and compensation).”

He cross questioned, “How can we trust the U.S. when a powerful country like the U.S. doesn’t trust us?” and repeated his usual claim by stating, “We can not agree to a lopsided disarmament.”

Concerning a “Libyan-type solution” of self-abandoning its development plan for nuclear weapons, Deputy Ambassador Han was quoted as saying, “Even though the U.S. and the U.K. negotiated with Libya for eight months, there has been no type of negotiation between the U.S. and us.”

On the other hand, the news is being watched with keen interest with the growing possibility that Deputy Ambassador Han, who is restricted from traveling to other parts in the U.S., might participate in the Korean Peninsula Peace Forum held in Washington on July 20.

Sponsors of the forum delivered the message that the U.S. Department of State is actively examining the plan for Deputy Ambassador Han to be able to participate in the Peace Forum scheduled to be held in the Senate conference room by three related organizations to Korea in the U.S., including the Korea Society (President Donald Gregg, Former U.S. Ambassador to Korea).

North Korean Ambassador to the U.N. Park Gil-yeon manages foreign channels between the U.N. as well as with other countries, while Deputy Ambassador Han exercises the actual Ambassador to the U.S. role of being responsible for its relationship with the U.S. with whom they do not have diplomatic relationships. Deputy Ambassador Han has visited states including New Mexico; however, his visit to Washington had not been granted in the meantime.

Kwon-Heui Hong konihong@donga.com