S to 1960s: Early Developments

In the early 1950s, North Korea began developing the institutional capability to train personnel for its nuclear program. In December 1952, the government established the Atomic Energy Research Institute and the Academy of Sciences, but nuclear work only began to progress when North Korea established cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union. Pyongyang signed the founding charter of the Soviet Union's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in February 1956, and began to send scientists and technicians to the USSR for training shortly thereafter. In 1959, North Korea and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy that included a provision for Soviet help to establish a nuclear research complex in Yongbyon, North Pyongan Province.

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union provided extensive technical assistance to North Korea in constructing the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, which included the installation of a Soviet IRT-2000 nuclear research reactor and associated facilities. North Korea used this small research reactor to produce radioisotopes and to train personnel. Although the cabinet and the Academy of Sciences were given operational and administrative oversight of the nuclear facilities, then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung retained ultimate control of the nuclear program and all decisions associated with weapons development.

Although bolstered by early assistance from Moscow, and to some extent Beijing, North Korea's nuclear program developed largely without significant foreign assistance. Reportedly, Kim Il Sung asked Beijing to share its nuclear weapons technology following China's first nuclear test in October 1964, but Chinese leader Mao Zedong refused. In any case, shortly thereafter, North Korean relations with China began to deteriorate.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02