Power plants in memory stick given to N. Korea were coal, not nuclear

According to S. Korea's Trade Ministry, a destroyed document about building a nuclear power plant in N. Korea was intended for internal review

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un join hands after signing the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula in an inter-Korean summit held at the Peace House in Panmunjom, on the afternoon of Apr. 27, 2018.

The memory stick that South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their summit on Apr. 27, 2018, contained information about building and supporting coal power plants rather than nuclear power plants, multiple sources in Korea’s ruling Democratic Party told the Hankyoreh on Jan. 31.

“While President Moon was in a reception room on the first floor of the summit venue, he gave Kim Jong-un a brochure and a memory stick containing a ‘new economic plan for the Korean Peninsula,’ and that plan contained measures for helping North Korea meet its energy needs,” a ruling party source knowledgeable about the inter-Korean summit told the Hankyoreh over the phone on Jan. 31.

“More specifically, that included construction and assistance for traditional power stations, including coal plants,” the source said, explaining that there was no absolutely no mention of supporting the construction of nuclear power plants.

These comments elaborate on former Blue House spokesperson Kim Eui-kyeom’s remark in a press briefing on Apr. 30, 2018, that the material given to Kim “included information related to power plants.”

Youn Kun-young, a lawmaker with the Democratic Party who attended the summit as the head of the Blue House situation room, emphasized in an interview with the Hankyoreh on Jan. 31 that the word “nuclear” didn’t even appear in the material.

In a position statement handed out to reporters on Jan. 31, the Unification Ministry said that the material about “the ‘new economic plan for the Korean Peninsula’ that was given to the North Koreans at the time of the inter-Korean summit on Apr. 27, 2018, did not contain the word ‘nuclear power’ or any information about it.”

“There haven’t been any attempts to build a nuclear reactor in North Korea as an inter-Korean cooperative project since 2018,” the Unification Ministry said in an earlier statement on Jan. 29.

On the evening of Jan. 31, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy also issued a press release in which it addressed the document titled “pursuing construction of a nuclear plant in North Korea.” The document, which was originally drafted and later destroyed by the Ministry, set off the opposition party’s allegations that the Moon administration had sought to build a nuclear reactor in the North.

“The document only contained information that was supposed to be reviewed as ideas for actual policy, and we’ve verified that there’s no truth to the claim that the government planned to build a nuclear reactor in North Korea,” the ministry said.

“This document was prepared while each ministry department was reviewing a range of ideas for actual policy as we prepared for the possibility that inter-Korean economic cooperation would be revised after the summit in April 2018. The preface to the document specified that it was intended for internal review and did not represent the government’s official position,” it continued.

“The document describes various speculative possibilities without any concrete plans. Areas not only in North Korea but also in South Korea were considered as possible sites for a nuclear reactor. One idea was for a nuclear reactor to be built in South Korea and for the power generated there to be transmitted to the North.”

The ministry also said, “This document was terminated without being reviewed further or disclosed to the outside, and the ideas [in the document] were never pursued as government policy.”

The People Power Party has mobilized all its resources to castigate the government over the alleged push to build a nuclear plant in the North. In an emergency meeting, party leaders demanded that the allegations be investigated by a parliamentary probe and a special prosecutor. They also decided to set up a special fact-finding committee inside the party.

By Seo Young-ji, Staff Reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]