North Korea has been shutting down its plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. There was an agreement between the United States and North Korea. Back in February of 2007, North Korea agreed to dismantle its Yongyon site, which was used for its nuclear weapons program. The United States would lift the sanctions on North Korea and provide foreign aid to the people.
China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea were part of the talks. On an interesting note, South Koreans and Chinese students clashed during the Olympic Torch relay. They were demonstrating against China’s treatment of North Korean defectors and refugees. Protests have brought about counter-protests from Chinese students from across the world.
Last year, the reactor was shut down. However, North Korea’s government failed to meet the deadline in which they had to disclose all of its nuclear activities. Now, North Korea has released its documents. These documents plan to be examined by the United States government afterwards. Possibly through these documents will the full extent of North Korea’s nuclear program will be revealed. But, there is the debate on how much information is contained in such documents.
Despite the documents being over 18,000 pages, how old is this information exactly? There is a good chance that there is new and updated information that may have been left out. This will bring many questions in Washington DC.
There are many factors that question the release of those documents. One would be North Korea and Syria. In the case of Syria, many say that Syria’s government supports the Shiite Arab Muslim group known as Hezbollah. Currently, Hezbollah and pro-government factions have been righting it out through the streets of Beirut, Lebanon.
Lebanon’s coalition government has accused Hezbollah of trying to stage a bloody coup to bring back the influence of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah “declared war” on the government after its telecommunications system was banned.
These 18,000 pages do bring up a lot of questions.