According to Yonhap:
A U.S.-led international consortium plans to renew its call this month for North Korea to compensate for losses incurred from scrapping a project to build two light-water reactors for the communist state, a senior Seoul official said Tuesday.
The move, which is likely to irritate North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-il, had been originally decided upon just weeks before Kim died of a heart attack in December last year. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) decided not to drop the demand for compensation from the North.
“The KEDO will send an official letter this month to North Korea, demanding it compensate US$1.89 billion for the termination of the light-water reactor project,” the official at Seoul’s foreign ministry said.
The KEDO, which also includes South Korea, Japan and the European Union, officially shut down the multi-billion-dollar project in 2006 after North Korea was caught by the U.S. pushing a second nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium in addition to its widely known plutonium-based program.
The consortium has since been asking North Korea to return the money it poured into the project. Prospects for the call have remained dim, however, given the North’s economic hardship and belligerency.
The $4.5 billion project, which was about 35 percent complete, dated back to a 1994 deal linked to North Korea’s promise to denuclearize. In return, the KEDO agreed to build two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors.
In September last year, amid renewed diplomatic efforts to resume the six-party talks on ending the North’s nuclear drive, Pyongyang abruptly demanded $5.7 billion in compensation, claiming that failure by the KEDO to build the reactors caused it heavy financial and other losses.“The KEDO’s renewed call for compensation would be an official reply to counter the North’s demand last September and has nothing to do with the passing of Kim Jong-il,” the official said on the condition of anonymity, brushing off concerns about possible irritation at the North.
The official believed that North Korea demanded compensation last September as part of its “negotiating ploy” to raise the issue of the halted project if the six-nation talks resume.
The death of Kim left many policymakers and analysts wondering if his youngest son and chosen heir, Kim Jong-un, will be able to successfully consolidate power in Pyongyang.
Shortly before Kim died, the United States and North Korea were apparently poised to announce a breakthrough toward the resumption of multilateral talks, which has been dormant since late 2008. Other members of the talks include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have insisted that the North must accept a monitored shutdown of its uranium enrichment program before the aid-for-disarmament talks can resume.
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Consortium to renew call for Pyongyang to reimburse reactor project losses
Yonhap
2012-2-7
