North Korea is serious about taking steps to denuclearize but will not proceed much further until the U.S. makes several important concessions, reported Management Science & Engineering Prof. Siegfried S. Hecker, the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, after a private trip to the country earlier this month.

Accompanied by Joel Wit, a former State Department official, and Keith Luse, a staffer for Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Hecker spent four days in North Korea to assess compliance with an Oct. 3 six-party agreement.

The extraordinary level of access granted to Hecker led him to believe that North Korean denuclearization will be permanent.

“The access we were granted to the nuclear facilities combined with the seriousness of the disablement actions convince me that North Korea is prepared to permanently shut down its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon,” Hecker told The Daily in an email. “That will mean no more bombs and no better bombs as long as they don’t test again.”

A visit to the Yongbyon Nuclear Center left Hecker satisfied that the North Koreans are making real progress.

“The disablement actions at the three key nuclear facilities are almost complete,” Hecker told reporters at a Stanford press conference on Feb. 20. “I judge these to be serious actions that will require significant time and effort to restart the facilities.”

Hecker described the process of shutting down the Center as a positive one.

“We found the level of cooperation between the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] nuclear specialists and the U.S. team that is supervising the disablement to be excellent,” he said. “Until the slow-down, the two sides struck the proper balance between doing the job expeditiously and doing it safely.”

The slow-down is a result of North Korea’s perception that the United States is not fulfilling terms of the Oct. 3 six-party talks, along with lingering frustration at being labeled part of President Bush’s “axis of evil.”

The North Koreans are refusing to offer a complete declaration of their nuclear program until they feel that the terms of the Oct. 3 agreement are met and their nation is removed from the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terror.

“The DPRK is not prepared to present a complete list [of their nuclear capabilities] until the other parties meet their obligations in the Oct. 3 agreement,” Hecker said.

The disagreement over fulfillment of the agreement is relatively straightforward. North Korean officials allege that they have not received 300,000 tons of heavy fuel and other energy-related equipment that was promised in the six-party talks, which involve North Korea, South Korea, China, the U.S., Russia and Japan.

The issue of North Korea’s place on the list of state sponsors of terror is more complex. The Bush administration has refused to remove North Korea from the list until it complies with the Oct. 3 agreement and officially declares its nuclear program. North Korea will not submit a declaration unless Bush removes it from the list first.

Despite these roadblocks, Hecker indicated that North Korea hopes to make progress on the path to denuclearization and complete fulfillment of the terms of the six-party talks.

“We were told that the DPRK wants these obligations [to deliver fuel and energy equipment] to be met quickly so they can move into the dismantlement stage,” Hecker said.

While in North Korea, Hecker and his colleagues also discussed the future of the North Korean workers at the Yongbyon center.

“At Yongbyon, we discussed a range of possibilities for the future of the workers once the facilities are dismantled,” Hecker said. “These discussions represent a good first step. Our DPRK hosts mostly listened and responded to our ideas.”

Hecker is hopeful for the future of North Korean denuclearization.

“I remain optimistic about denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, but it will most likely take a long time,” Hecker told The Daily.

“Nevertheless, right now we are moving in the right direction,” he added. “It was only 15 months ago that North Korea defied the world and detonated a nuclear device. We have made a lot of progress since that time.”