Telling Half the Story at Yongbyon

The Washington Post reassures us that North Korea’s threat to restart plutonium processing is mostly empty because of the current condition of its 5-MW reaction. Not only do I agree that the reactor is probably a wreck, I believe that was also true before the North Koreans sold us their scrap heap for such a high price. Funny, I don’t remember Siegfried Hecker telling us that in 2007 when the State Department was telling us what a breakthrough this deal was.

The major premise of Post’s story relies mostly on Hecker, who strongly supports any deal the North Koreans give us, and on a few like-minded others. It also focuses exclusively on one reactor in North Korea’s plutonium reprocessing program. The Post would have written a more balanced and informative story if it had started with its own archives and questioned Hecker — and some contrarian experts like Caroline Leddy or Henry Sokolski — about the 50-MW reactor nearby. I could be convinced that the 50-MW reactor isn’t really the danger the Post suggested it was in 2005, but I have yet to see any serious recent reporting on that big pink elephant in this room.