that Kim il-Sung come clean and show his nuclear hand like everyone else. North Korea immediately barred all IAEA inspectors, and threatened to drop out of the NPT altogether.
Finally in mid-1994, North Korea quit the IAEA. President Clinton, ever eager for compromise, agreed that the U.S. would provide North Korea with two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil per annum, if only the new Dear Leader, the hideous Kim Jong-il, would rejoin the IAEA and the NPT, and “normalize economic relations” between North Korea and the United States.
It would end up costing the U.S. taxpayer $20 million to $30 million per year, and they called it the “Agreed Framework.”
In 1995, less than one year after the Clinton deal, the head of the CIA, John Deutch, estimated that North Korea’s new Nodong-1 missile would be deployed within a year, and that the North Koreans were continuing under the most secretive circumstances to work on nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads. The constant warnings of the U.S. Intelligence community were essentially ignored by the Administration.
By the spring of 1997, the situation had deteriorated. It was obvious that Kim Jong-il was producing plutonium.
Evidence was building. A defector, a high-ranking North Korean General, fled to China and published an essay confirming that his former country did have nuclear weapons that could be used against South Korea and Japan. The brilliant U.S. satellite QuickBird picked up sensational pictures of heavy activity in the sprawling Yongbyon nuclear facility, much of which is located underground. The warnings of a new defector, Choon Sun Lee, a senior official in North Korea’s giant military infrastructure, of top-secret underground plutonium production and weapons development were almost certainly correct.
In June 1998, Kim Jong-il’s government declared it would continue to develop and export nuclear-capable missiles. The U.S. Intelligence community, almost beside itself with concern, issued warning after warning that North Korea had built a huge underground facility that may be either a nuclear reactor or reprocessing plant, and a report from Bill Richardson’s Department of Energy claimed evidence that North Korea was undoubtedly working on uranium-enrichment techniques — which meant, broadly, turning that lethal substance into weapons-grade nuclear explosives.
Four months later, the National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, headed by the aggressive Admiral Arnold Morgan, practically bellowed down the phone to the President that North Korea had between 25 and 30 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to make several nuclear warheads.
By the year 2002, things were on their way from moderate to diabolical. It was now clear that Kim Jong-il had already produced a formidable arsenal of SCUD missiles for sale to anyone who needed them.
The writings of Choon Sun Lee came rushing back to haunt everyone involved. Choon had sworn that the great Mount of Chun-Ma had been hollowed out to house a secret uranium processing plant. He described a massive tunnel, extending more than a mile into the mountain, opening into underground facilities housed in chambers carved out of the rock. In one of them there was a plant to turn uranium ore into yellowcake, the first step towards enriching it into weapons-grade material.
U.S. Intelligence considered Choon’s observations to be too detailed to be false, and it all stacked up accurately with their own satellite observations of the existence of vast, mysterious excavations, twenty-two of them, in the mountains of North Korea. If you believed Choon, the West was staring quite literally at a nuclear empire operational under the reign of Kim Jong-il.
And Choon was by no means finished. He described every aspect of the ore’s removal by truck and helicopter to an underground facility in a hidden valley. A third major defector came forward, announcing in 2002 that the great mountain of Kwanmo-bong, 270 miles to the northwest of Pyongyang — and at almost 8,000 feet the second highest peak in the country — had been hollowed out by an army of thousands, at night, sandbag by sandbag, to house yet another secret nuclear plant.
Everything erupted into an icy standoff in December 2002. The Americans located a Korean freighter near Socotra Island off the coast of Yemen and requested a nearby warship from the Spanish Navy to apprehend it. A few hours later, the Spaniards fired several broadsides over the ship’s bows, forcing it to stop, and then boarded. The
But before the U.S. could roar its disapproval, North Korea announced it would immediately restart the nuclear reactors at Yongbyon and resume operations producing electricity. A total lie. They’d never ceased operations, and what the reactors really produced was plutonium — plutonium for nuclear warheads. Kim seemed to think he could best operate his country’s economy by becoming an illegal nuclear arms dealer, selling weapons- grade plutonium, medium-and short-range missiles, and warheads. It was hard to imagine a more antagonistic marketing plan, deliberately designed to infuriate the Americans, especially a Republican Administration that was essentially fed up to the back teeth with rogue states and uncooperative, pain-in-the-ass foreigners.
The international inspectors now claimed they were unable to continue monitoring the North Korean facility. And Kim Jong-il expelled them all within a few more days.
As the first decade of the twenty-first century wore on, the reactors at Yongbyon continued to harvest plutonium, and reports arrived daily at Fort Meade that the big cog in the Korean nuclear wheel had undoubtedly become the great mountain of Kwanmo-bong in the remote northeast, only 25 miles from the Chinese border.
It was to this hidden underground plant that General Ravi Rashood was now headed. Deep inside that mountain, he hoped, was the one weapon that would drive the hated Americans out of the Middle East forever.
He did not even pretend to understand the Oriental mind. All he knew was that North Korea had a reputation for on-time, no-questions-asked delivery. Their product was not cheap, in fact everything carried a risk premium, bumping up the price to compensate the Koreans for any unhappy circumstances that might befall them as a result of their manufacturing policies.
Very few people from the outside world had been permitted to see the North Korean nuclear facilities, certainly not inside the enormous mountain caverns that housed the plant. But the Hamas General, whom the Koreans swiftly identified as a major customer, had insisted on stringent terms for his acceptance of the product.
Yes, he would accept the ex-factory terms. As soon as his order left the plant, it became the property, and its journey to a seaport the responsibility, of Hamas. The Koreans would accept no liability for accident.
General Ravi assumed this meant that if the whole lot accidentally disappeared somewhere on the highway, the Koreans were still owed the money. He told them he would agree only if he and his men watched and supervised the loading, and traveled with the product trans — North Korea to the waiting ship. In the end he accepted that there would be just one Korean driver for the 300-mile journey to the western seaport of Nampo.
He had been told that North Korea, which is about the size of the state of Mississippi, had a population of 24 million, half of whom lived in Pyongyang. But even after driving halfway across the country, miles upon miles through a deserted, rugged landscape, he had no idea where the others lived. Only occasionally were there small fishing villages clustered to his right, on the shores of the Sea of Japan.
Ravi had been allowed no insights or prior knowledge before entering the country. There were no photographs or promotional handouts demonstrating the excellence of Korean manufacturing. He was just given a map of the country showing the main towns and roads, and a driver to take him to the factory inside Kwanmo- bong.
The only other facts the General knew about North Korea were military — that this ridiculous, backward Third World outcast owned the third largest army in the world, with 1.2 million men under arms (as opposed to 650,000 in South Korea). One quarter of Korea’s GDP was spent annually on their Armed Forces and yet their Navy was very modest, their air force large but mostly obsolete.
The place gave Ravi the creeps. But he had no time to worry about that. In a couple of hours he would need to be on high alert, and he stared straight ahead, thinking, while the big army truck clattered along the coastal highway.
They came roaring through the towns of Hamhung and Pukchong, and followed the northeastern Korean railroad to Kilju and Chilbosan. Another 20 miles and his driver would veer left off the main road onto what looked
