By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
The second phase of denuclearization of North Korea will get on track as the United States is to send a team of nuclear experts to North Korea today, the first action of implementing the agreement reached in the six-party talks last Wednesday.
The group, led by Sung Kim, head of Korean affairs at the U.S. State Department, will discuss ways of disabling nuclear facilities in Yongbyon with North Korean officials.
The Oct. 3 agreement states the group's visit to Yongbyon as the first activity for the disablement, and their visit means the official kickoff of the second-phase denuclearization.
``This team is going to be putting the roadmap in place, so that you get from where we are right now to a disabled Yongbyon facility at the end of this year,'' Sean McCormack, spokesman of the U.S. State Department, told reporters.
After North Korea shut down the Yongbyon nuclear complex last July as the first phase of denuclearization, the communist country is required to disable the nuclear facilities and declare all nuclear weapons programs by year-end in return for economic aid and political concessions.
Pyongyang will receive one million tons of heavy fuel oils or the equivalent and the normalization of relations with Washington and Tokyo for abandoning the nuclear program.
The U.S. team will finalize a technical plan for the disablement based on the report by another nuclear team of the United States, China and Russia, which visited Yongbyon last month.
The group will submit a report to chief negotiators of the six-party talks after the visit to North Korea. Once negotiators approve the report, a U.S. organization will conduct the disablement process while negotiators will supervise it by forming an inspection team, according to sources.
The disablement will be made to the five megawatt experimental reactor, the reprocessing plant and nuclear fuel rod fabrication facility in Yongbyon, according to the agreement.
North Korea will likely declare its nuclear program at the end of this month when an early stage of disablement process is done.
Meanwhile, experts say that the declaration will be a more difficult process than the disablement process as details of the declaration are not written in the Oct. 3 agreement.
``North Korea was sure to conduct the disablement but the declaration can be a stumbling block because the United States and North Korea can have a different definition of it,'' said Sheen Seong-ho, an international relations professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.
Though North Korea will declare nuclear weapons programs, it is unclear that the Stalinist country would include literally all programs such as uranium-based ones, he added.
Government officials also hinted that the declaration would take longer than expected.
``The declaration is not an one-time event but a process,'' an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on condition of anonymity. ``North Korea's declaration requires verification process, which can take place several times.''
The six-party talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.