Input 2021.02.02 06:00
Gwanga “It is not a matter to write a report led by three public officials below the director level.”
Higher orders such as the Blue House or the possibility of excessive loyalty to former Minister Paik Woon-gyu
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy released the original document for review of the “North Korean nuclear power plant construction promotion plan (aka Bukwonchu)”, which is known to have been scrapped ahead of the decision to close Wolseong Unit 1 on the 1st, but doubts about the background of this document Is not clearing. The Ministry of Industry said, “This is the review data reviewed at the level of the idea, and there is no additional progress”, but it is questioning why such a review was conducted.
The time when the Ministry of Industry and Industry produced documents related to North Korean nuclear power plants is between the first inter-Korean summit in 2018 (April 27) and the second inter-Korean summit (May 26). The earliest time to write the document was May 2, 2018, five days after the April 27 Panmunjom Summit. This is the reason why opposition parties such as the people’s power argue that it is highly probable that the government at the time promoted the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea, considering the time of writing the document.
◇ Construction of nuclear power plant, is it a card for the inter-Korean summit? “I can’t understand the deletion”
The issue is whether the Blue House was involved in the preparation of the North Korean nuclear aid document. The opposition argues that the Moon Jae-in administration, which was promoting a chain summit between the two Koreas and the United States and North Korea at the time, may have proposed the construction of a nuclear power plant as an incentive to persuade the North to denuclearize.
This is because North Korea, suffering from power shortages, has demanded the construction of light water reactors and energy support in exchange for denuclearization whenever major denuclearization discussions, such as the 1994 Geneva agreement and the six-party talks in the 2000s.
Among the deleted files, the’Kedo-related work experience list’ and’Kyeongsu-ro white paper’ are also included in this analysis. KEDO (Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization) is an international organization established to build a light water reactor in Sinpo, South Hamgyeong Province in 1995, the year following the Geneva agreement.
Looking at the deleted files in detail, two versions of the’North Korean Nuclear Power Plant Construction Promotion Plan’ were deleted from the’North Cone’ folder, which seems to be an abbreviation of’North Korean nuclear power plant promotion plan’. In other folders, the files’Step-by-Step Cooperation Task for Establishing North Korean Electric Power Infrastructure’ and’North Korean Electric Power Industry Status and German Integration Case’ have also been deleted.
Given this background, it seems highly likely that a plan to revive the North Korean light water reactor construction project or to pursue a similar plan was considered. However, it is necessary to investigate whether the subject of the review is at the internal level of the Ministry of Industry and whether there was an instruction from the Blue House.
◇ “It’s a simple idea, but it’s unusual to delete it late at night”
The problem is the deletion of documents. A common sense response is that if it was a simple review document created in the context of improving inter-Korean relations, exposure to the auditor during the audit process would not cause much problems. The reason why it had to be deleted secretly at night raises suspicion that there may have been more concrete proposals than simple ideas.
In addition, it is difficult to understand that it is difficult to understand that the contents related to the construction of the nuclear power plant in North Korea, which is a strategic material, were written entirely by the judgment of three public officials below the director level. There are also reactions that they cannot accept that the plan to install the latest Korean reactor, APR1400, and export-type new reactor,’APR+/SMART’, in North Korea was discussed among practitioners.
“I don’t know if the deletion of Moon Sun was trying to conceal personal faults or whether it was trying to conceal the link between the organization (Ministry of Industry) and the upper line (Blue House), but without any instructions or hints from the upper line, It was difficult to understand as a public official that deleted documents late at night in order to get rid of them.”
◇ Former Minister Paik Woon-gyu + three officials at the nuclear power plant’excessive loyalty’… “I can’t understand the deletion”
The key issue is how deeply the first Minister of Industry of the Moon Jae-in administration was involved in the preparation of the document. Jeon Baek, a former professor at the Department of Energy Engineering at Hanyang University, was assigned the mission to implement the Moon Jae-in government’s post-nuclear power policy, and was appointed Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy.
In particular, he is an alumni of inorganic materials engineering at Hanyang University with former president Lim Jong-seok, who was in power at the time, with Baek in 82 and former director Im in 86. The general sentiment of the Sejong City officials at the time was that the former Minister Lim exerts considerable influence over the industrial affairs of former Minister Baek Un-gyu, who was a professor with a poor reputation. The prosecution summoned former Minister Baek on the 25th of last month and is expanding the investigation to the upper line.
Director A of the Ministry of Industry, who was arrested for the deletion of the document, was also known as a close friend of former Minister Baek. According to the Ministry of Industry, etc., it is known that Baek Jeon was the person who directly persuaded Director A, who hesitated to take office as a nuclear power plant policy officer. For this reason, Director A was special enough to take a walk with former Minister Baek and Jaecheon, and from December 2018, he served as a policy adviser to the minister.
For this reason, there is a possibility that, after the inter-Korean summit, expectations for inter-Korean economic cooperation are growing, and the possibility that Minister Paik Woon-gyu was interested in the inter-Korean cooperation project based on nuclear power plants. As the opposition party argued, it is a general observation of the Sejong City officials that neither the possibility that the report was prepared by upper orders such as the Blue House, nor the possibility that Baek actively requested the report to be prepared in order to be loyal to the upper part. There is also an analysis that the problem may have grown due to the excessive loyalty of the three officials in charge.
“We have to look at the results of the prosecution’s investigation, but even without any intervention or instructions from the Blue House, it may have been reviewed by the ministry’s working group because of the social atmosphere that raised expectations for economic cooperation after the inter-Korean summit.” There is a possibility that the over-loyalty of the government officials and the government has raised the problem.” Still, he said, “However, it is not possible to explain why the document was deleted even among neighboring officials.”