Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 28, 1994 TAG: 9407280076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA LENGTH: Medium
The defector claims he's 35-year-old Kang Myong Do, the son-in-law of North Korea's prime minister. He said he fled the North in May after the hard-line communist government ordered him captured dead or alive.
If he is Kang, as South Korean intelligence officials suggest, he would be the first member of the North Korean government's inner circle to assert the North has nuclear weapons.
``I can say with confidence that the nuclear program is not just a ploy,'' he said at a news conference in Seoul on Wednesday.
Also present at the news conference was another high-ranking defector, Cho Myong Chol, a lecturer at Kim Il Sung University and a son of former Construction Minister Cho Chol Jun.
Both arrived in Seoul through an unspecified Southeast Asian country.
North Korea already has five nuclear warheads, half the number it intends to have by the year's end, he said. In addition, it is working on a system to deliver them and hopes to have an experimental prototype, also by year's end, he said.
In the meantime, he said, the North is trying to delay international inspections of its nuclear sites by stalling talks with the United States and South Korea.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman said he could not say whether the assertions were true, only that they exceed the worst-case scenario provided by Western intelligence.
``There is a debate within our own intelligence community about the exact parameters of the North Korean nuclear program,'' Michael McCurry said.
``But the information provided by this defector falls well beyond and well outside of those parameters. So the reliability of the information is something that, frankly, we're not certain we can assess at this point.''
Defense Secretary William Perry said the Clinton administration still believes North Korea has built no more than two bombs.
Western intelligence has said previously that the North is believed to have developed crude nuclear devices but lacks the means to deliver them.
The assertions come at a key juncture in the long-running standoff over North Korea's nuclear intentions. High-level U.S.-North Korea talks are to resume Friday in Geneva after a one-month hiatus because of the death of longtime leader Kim Il Sung.
One of the implications of the defector's assertions is that North Korea would have to have more sources of plutonium than acknowledged, said Bruce Cumings, a history professor at Northwestern University and a close watcher of inter-Korean relations who said he doubted the claims.
North Korea has denied accusations it is developing nuclear weapons, but for 17 months has not allowed international inspections that would prove its claim.
The defector told reporters he had gotten his information from conversations with the intelligence chief responsible for Yongbyon, the North's main nuclear complex.
South Korean intelligence officials say they believe he is the prime minister's son-in-law, as he claims. He provided family photos of himself with his wife - whom he left behind in the North - and the prime minister. He also had a passport and other official documents to support his identity.
South Korean officials said Kang's account provided a rare insight into the thinking of North Korea's leadership on a range of issues other than the nuclear dispute.
He described a rift between junior and senior generals in the North Korean military, and said he believed North Korea's apparent new leader, Kim Jong Il, would not last long unless he solves his country's economic woes.
by CNB