NBC Nightly News (6:30 PM ET) October 27, 2002
South Koreans protesting North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons
JOHN SEIGENTHALER, anchor: Now to Korea and the warnings from the United States to North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. NBC's Kevin Tibbles traveled to the border between North and South.
KEVIN TIBBLES reporting: South Korean War veterans marching on the streets of Seoul 50 years after fighting their fellow Koreans with an angry message for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. They don't want another war. What's heightened fears here: North Korea's stunning disclosure it has a nuclear weapons program. This satellite photo obtained by NBC News reveals a suspected underground uranium facility outside the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. US officials say it could eventually produce enough material to fuel a nuclear weapons assembly line.
Mr. JOHN PIKE : It suggests that the United States may have underestimated the size of North Korea's nuclear stockpile.
TIBBLES: After four days of talks, the two Koreas agreed to keep trying to resolve differences over the North's nuclear weapons program through dialogue, and South Korea's president warned economic sanctions or military action against the North would backfire.
That is North Korea on the other side of this river, where one million soldiers are about a half hour's drive from downtown Seoul and its 10 million inhabitants. And hidden in those hills, North Korea's arsenal which one day many fear could contain a nuclear bomb.
Under a 1994 agreement, North Korea promised to abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for oil, medical and food aid, help it still desperately needs with over two million dead from famine. South Korean Professor Lee Chung Min says the North is now trying to bully its way out of economic collapse.
Professor LEE CHUNG MIN: This is blackmail, pure and simple. North Korea basically saying, 'Feed me or I'll shoot you.'
TIBBLES: But this time the UN agency that monitors nuclear weapons worldwide says no new deals with the North should be cut.
Mr. MOHAMMED EL BARADEI (International Atomic Energy Agency): They have to give it up before we can discuss other aspect of normalization.
TIBBLES: The Bush administration forced to divide attentions between two members of what the president has called the "axis of evil": Iraq, and now North Korea. Kevin Tibbles, NBC News on the border of North and South Korea.
Copyright 2002 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
