Joel Wit, a fellow at the Center for Korean Research at Weatherhead, gave a presentation on his February “Journey to Yongbyon” (North Korean nuclear plant) with an international assessment team. It was hosted by Charles Armstrong at CKR, and Samuel Kim was there too – for a guy who’s retired he sure hangs around his old office a lot. Some interesting takeaways:
1. Asymmetric experience among US-DPRK foreign relations staff
During his visit to Pyongyang, Wit met with people from the ‘Bureau of North American Affairs’ in the DPRK’s foreign affairs ministry, and they were the same people he met with on his previous visit in 1993, their “whole adult careers” had been spent dealing with one country portfolio. He compares this with the Bush administration whose foreign policy appointments excluded many North Korea portfolio-experienced State Department personnel from the start, which I guess may have included Wit, in which case I can understand why he’s a little bitter about it.
2. The state of DPRK nuclear facilities
Is poor, apparently. He showed us photos and described the 5MW reactor structure as a “concrete monster” with broken windows and shoddy construction, and its control room looked like it was “from a 1950s sci-fi movie”. They didn’t even have anti-radiation protective gear, which the team had to bring themselves. Apparently nuclear safety is not a big issue there. Some facilities cannot be maintained by IAEA as they were sealed off due to radioactive waste. The denuclearization process will have to deal with this expensive waste disposal issue somehow.
3. Nuclear scientists and engineers as a special interest group
There are some ~3000 technicians and scientists who need to be redirected to civilian jobs as denuclearization proceeds, but they are highly skilled and trained in a very specialized range of jobs and have a big interest in maintaining the status quo, instead of having to be retrained to do something else since there just aren’t a lot of other opportunities for people with that skill-set there. Other than being a possible stumbling block if not coopted into the process, this is a security problem for the US since highly skilled nuclear scientists can be an asset to its rivals, both existing nuclear powers and those with nuclear ambitions.
But his presentation also had a couple of other interesting factoids and photos:
1. ‘Traffic ladies’ – he described them as ‘beautiful women’ who are also disciplined and tough. It says something about Pyongyang’s infrastructural development and the relative cost of labor to capital to have such a labor intensive transportation management system. Either labor is so cheap that it doesn’t make sense to invest in technology yet, or the infrastructure is still not reliable enough to operate an automated system. On one hand, many developing countries that do not have traffic light infrastructure tend to not have any traffic management at all, so it’s to the DPRK’s credit that they have some system in place, even if it’s probably not a sustainable or scalable one.
2. The ‘Kimjongilia’ begonia (there is also a Kimilsungia orchid) was proudly displayed at the Koryo hotel in full bloom. Apparently it was the great leader’s birthday when Wit visited, which is around the same time as my birthday. It was presented to the great leader by a botanist from Chongryon.
3. The only airline serving Pyongyang is Koryo Airlines, and all their planes are flown by ex-MiG pilots. That may not be a bad thing since fighter jets require lots of intense training to pilot, but it may not be good if the skills are not directly transferable. In any case I would probably feel safer taking the train.
