A North Korean nuclear arsenal threatening South Korea, 37,000 American troops and Japan would be bad enough. But an Iranian nuclear capability might be even worse. And as the Clinton administration continues its effort to stop or reverse Pyongyang's clandestine nuclear program, U.S. officials are acutely aware that failure could add nuclear weapons technology and material to Pyongyang's already hefty export catalog. "A number of countries around the world are proliferation problems," CIA Director James Woolsey said last week. "But North Korea is in a league of its own."
In the past three decades, North Korea has developed chemical and biological weapons and, more recently, the ballistic missiles needed to deliver them hundreds of miles. Eager for hard currency, Pyongyang has increasingly become a major arms supplier for countries that can no longer buy all the weapons they want from Moscow or Beijing.
North Korea may have shared chemical or biological weapons technology with Syria, Iran and Libya. But it is North Korea's expanding trade in ballistic missiles that worries Clinton administration officials most. "North Korea is the only unabashed seller of missile systems covered by the MTCR," or Missile Technology Control Regime, says one White House official. During the past few years, Pyongyang sold Syria and Iran Scud-C missiles it developed after reverse-engineering Soviet Scud-Bs; it also sold both countries the know-how to build their own Scuds. The Scud-C, with an approximate range of 300 miles, can hit any point in Israel from Syria.
Delivery. Now Pyongyang is in the final stages of developing a follow-on missile, the No-Dong, which has a range of about 600 miles, and is working on two others with approximate ranges of 1,200 and 2,200 miles. The No-Dong, which has been developed with Iranian financial support and cooperation, is capable of carrying nuclear or chemical warheads and could enable Iran to threaten an arc from Jerusalem to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
American officials worry that sales of nuclear weapons technology and material could follow the missiles, with Iran the most probable customer. "They have shown an inclination to sell anything at all that they can," says a senior administration official. North Korea's nuclear ties to Iran are murky, but last month the two countries agreed to step up military and nuclear cooperation, and North Korean nuclear scientists reportedly are working in Iran. According to CIA estimates, outside help could sharply reduce the seven to nine years analysts now think Tehran needs to produce its own nuclear weapons.
Worse, Pyongyang's proliferation potential could mushroom in the next few years. North Korea's only operating nuclear reactor -- a 5-megawatt plant -- can produce enough plutonium to manufacture only a single atomic bomb every year or two. The North has both a 50-megawatt and a 200-megawatt reactor under construction and could have both running in 1996. Experts say that with all three reactors in operation, North Korea could process sufficient plutonium for 20 or more nuclear weapons a year.
Peddling plutonium and nuclear technology would be risky but tempting: It could earn billions of dollars for a cash-starved regime. And according to Woolsey, the proceeds from North Korea's existing arms sales go directly into the coffers of the military, a key constituency in the byzantine succession process underway in Pyongyang between President Kim Il Sung and his erratic son Kim Jong Il.
"This is a rogue state selling to rogue states," says one State Department official. The only solution, U.S. officials conclude, is to stop Pyongyang from making its own nuclear weapons.
