S. Korean nuke envoy to visit Pyongyang to discuss fuel rod purchase

By Lee Chi-dong

SEOUL, Jan. 13 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's deputy chief nuclear envoy will visit North Korea later this week to discuss the possible purchase of unused fuel rods stored at the North's main nuclear plant which are being disabled under a multilateral deal, Seoul's foreign ministry confirmed Tuesday.

Hwang Joon-kook, director general of the ministry's North Korean nuclear affairs
bureau, will leave Seoul for Beijing on Wednesday, where he will take a flight to
Pyongyang the following day, the ministry said.
He is to be accompanied by several South Korean nuclear experts during the
open-ended trip, which may provide a breakthrough in the stalled-six way talks on
Pyongyang's atomic weapons program.
"Our fact-finding team will focus on the technical and economic aspects of a
decision on the handling of North Korea's unused fuel rods," the ministry said in
a press release. The delegation will visit Pyongyang and Yongbyon, the hub of the
North's nuclear program, but a schedule has not yet been fixed for a meeting with
North Korean officials.
North Korea declared last year that it has some 14,000 unused fuel rods, each one
measuring about 60 centimeters long, stored at the Yongbyon site.
The total amount is equivalent to 100 tons of uranium, a ministry official said
in a background briefing for local reporters. He declined to calculate its market
value, citing fluctuations in uranium prices.
"We delivered our intention of visiting North Korea late last year and the North
recently responded to it," the official said on the customary condition of
anonymity. "North Korea asked us to travel via Beijing, not the inter-Korean
border."
If the trip is made, Hwang will be the highest South Korean government official
to visit Pyongyang since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in
Seoul in February last year, pledging to get tough on the communist neighbor.
Inter-Korean relations have since been frozen, with North Korea cutting off
virtually all official contact with Seoul. Their border is tightly sealed and
North Korea bars any cross-border travel by South Korean officials.
Under an aid-for-denuclearization deal signed with South Korea, the U.S., China,
Russia and Japan in 2007, North Korea has nearly completed disablement of the
plutonium-producing reactor.
The six-way talks currently remain deadlocked over ways to verify the North's
declaration of its nuclear program.
Under the six-party agreement, North Korea has so far received over half of the
promised 1 million tons of fuel oil in return for the slow-going removal of the
8,000 spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon plant.
The cash-strapped communist country has indicated that it prefers selling the
unused rods to a third country rather than scrapping them.
Removing the unused rods from the nuclear facilities is the last of 11
disablement steps. South Korea hopes it can use the unused North Korean fuel rods
for its nuclear power plants.
South Korea currently has 20 nuclear power plants in operation and several more
under construction.