Any restart of denuclearization talks with Pyongyang will likely end up as a “great fraud” due to its firm resolve to master its nuclear program, massive political risks for South Korean and US leaders, and the lack of solid monitoring mechanisms, a former senior North Korean diplomat said Thursday.



Thae Yong-ho, who served as the No. 2 man at the communist state’s embassy in London before defecting to the South last summer, said that despite calls for dialogue, a new round of gathering would only buy time for leader Kim Jong-un to prop up the moribund economy as shown by the so-called Geneva agreement with the US in 1994.



“In my view, the Geneva deal was a joint work of fraud by Kim Jong-il and Bill Clinton,” he said at an international conference hosted by the Institute for National Security Strategy, an affiliate of the National Security Service, referring to the then North Korean and US leaders.





Former senior North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho speaks at an international conference hosted by the Institute for National Security Strategy, Thursday. (Yonhap)

At least within the North, including the Foreign Ministry, no one saw the agreement’s implementation as possible in the first place, he said, citing the utter absence of infrastructure required for a light water reactor to be built by Seoul and Washington.



“Back then, what Kim Jong-il needed the most was time, the time to achieve his purpose --patching up the country after his father Kim Il-sung died, the Soviet Union collapsed and so many people died from hunger,” Thae said.



“Clinton, for his part, had apparently assessed that the North was about to break down on its own and sought to buy time to manage the situation for the time being.”



Thae, who now works at the Seoul-based think tank, underscored that the incumbent Kim will not give up his nuclear ambition even in return for $10 trillion won. The leaders of South Korea and the US, too, would not be able to bear massive risks to strike such a deal at a time when they lack any authority or mechanism to inspect the reclusive country.



“It’s never about the quantity or quality of incentives. … Kim will never engage in any act that may pose threats to his long-term rule,” he said, referring to offers from Russia and China to build a gas pipeline and railroad running through the peninsula from there.



The one-day seminar also brought together dozens of former top policymakers and prominent scholars at home and from the US, China, Japan and Russia. They trade views on the prospects for the security situation in Northeast Asia and especially on the Korean Peninsula in the face of evolving North Korean threats and the Donald Trump leadership.



Lee Sang-hyun, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said Pyongyang is presumed to have expanded its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to 280 kilograms and weapons-grade plutonium to 52 kilograms, with its arsenal reaching as many as 45 nuclear bombs.



“Given the stockpile estimates and that one nuclear warhead generally requires 2-6 kilograms of plutonium or 15-20 kilograms of HEU, it’s possible for North Korea to have built 22-45 nuclear weapons,” Lee said.



“Especially if nuclear boosting technologies are employed, it would help with not only the warheads’ miniaturization but also in making more weapons with relatively small amounts of nuclear materials.”



Lee Sang-hyun, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute (Yonhap)