Seoul, October 08: The South Korean foreign minister has rejected a new report that North Korea is in the final stages of restoring an ageing nuclear plant.
“What we know is that they are not yet at that kind of stage,” Yu Myung-hwan said on Thursday when asked if the North was about to restore the five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
On Tuesday, a government source told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that Pyongyang was in the final stages of restoring the Yongbyon complex.
In 2007, North Korea began taking apart the facility that includes a reactor, a fuel fabrication plant and a plutonium separation facility under a six-way deal in return for aid.
However, Pyongyang announced this year that it had resumed the part of the plant used to separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
On Tuesday, Pyongyang signaled it could return to the disarmament-for-aid talks with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US that Pyongyang had declared dead six months ago.
Yu also said that Pyongyang would still be subject to UN Security Council sanctions imposed after its nuclear test in May even if it returns to the nuclear disarmament talks.
“It is the position of not only South Korea and the United States but also Japan, Russia and China that sanctions cannot be lifted or suspended just because the North returns to dialog,” Yu said.
—–Agencies