Word: seoul
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...nuclear intentions of Iran and North Korea have been a major source of global angst for more than a year, and the Bush Administration is set to keep the pressure on both countries. Stopping in Seoul last week during a swing through Asia to revive talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the world badly needed to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. North Korea "is a danger to every one of its neighbors," he said...
...ally, has been secretly tinkering with the ingredients for atomic weapons. The South Korean government in September admitted it had failed to tell the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about its experiments with bomb-usable materials including plutonium, sparking an investigation by the agency into possible violations of Seoul's nonproliferation commitments. Although the IAEA is not due to report its findings until Nov. 25, Powell, in an interview on Korean television, said the case was as good as closed. "I'm quite sure that the IAEA will see it as a minor problem with experimentation," he said...
...Compared with its northern neighbor, South Korea certainly poses no threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula. But that doesn't mean the country is innocent of breaking its nuclear promises. Seoul signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1975, agreeing not to pursue bomb-making technology and to submit to IAEA monitoring so that techniques and materials used in nuclear-power plants are not converted to military...
...Seoul insists its scientists were not conducting weapons research and that it has fully disclosed its activities. But there is nagging evidence that the country has for decades periodically carried out clandestine experiments to gain know-how that would allow it to quickly develop atomic weapons, specifically through the production of plutonium and enrichment of uranium. (Much of the controversy surrounding Iran's nuclear program concerns efforts to enrich uranium.) Although those radioactive elements can be found in peaceful nuclear programs (with 19 reactors supplying 40% of its electricity, South Korea relies heavily on nuclear power), Seoul agreed...
...experiment in which a minute quantity of plutonium was separated from uranium. IAEA inspectors first became suspicious in 1997 when a swab at a research reactor near Seoul picked up traces of plutonium that shouldn't have been there. For years, Seoul offered no explanation, saying the paperwork had been lost. Finally, in September, the president of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), Chang In Soon, said the traces were residual material from a "one-off test" in which fuel was taken from a reactor and dissolved in chemicals, allowing the plutonium it contained to be extracted. A confidential...