Inspections to confirm that North Korea had shut down its nuclear program and secure its arms would be far more onerous than those in Iran under a current deal that President Trump wants to end.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 As he weighs opening nuclear disarmament negotiations with North Korea, President Trump faces a regime that for decades has hidden key elements of its nuclear programs from international monitors and has banned inspectors from the country.
As a result, the first step in any meaningful agreement will be a declaration from North Korea about the scope of its nuclear program, a declaration that no one will believe.
It will have to be followed by what experts call the most extensive inspection campaign in the history of nuclear disarmament, one that will have to delve into a program that stretches back more than half a century and now covers square miles of industrial sites and hidden tunnels across the mountainous North. And it may demand more than the 300 inspectors the International Atomic Energy Agency now deploys to assess the nuclear facilities of nearly 200 countries.
For Mr. Trump, getting the right declaration and inspection process is critical given his argument that false declarations from Iran undercut the legitimacy of the 2015 nuclear accord, which he is debating pulling out of later this week.
While there is no question Iran hid much of its weapons-designing past, North Korea has concealed programs on a far larger scale and built an arsenal of 20 to 60 nuclear warheads \u2014 compared to none in Iran. In fact, the Iran inspections, the I. A. E. A. says, have gone on without a hitch in the past two years, though it is a far smaller, comparatively easier effort.
\u201cNorth Korea could make Iran look easy,\u201d Ernest J. Moniz, the former Energy Department secretary and nuclear scientist who negotiated many details of the 2015 deal during the Obama administration, said last week.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t \u2018Trust but verify,\u2019\u201d he said, using Ronald Reagan\u2019s phrase from arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. \u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Distrust everything and verify, verify.\u2019\u201d
Success with a relatively small force of inspectors in North Korea, according to former weapons inspectors, depends on the full cooperation of its leader, Kim Jong-un, in opening up the vast nuclear enterprise he inherited from his father and grandfather.
Four years ago, the RAND Corporation, which often conducts studies for the Defense Department, estimated that finding and securing the North\u2019s weapons of mass destruction if the nation fell apart \u2014 or into any situation in which it might be hostile to inspection \u2014 could require up to 273,000 troops. That is far more than the peak of the American occupying force in Iraq.
Like Iran, North Korea would have to begin any denuclearization pact with a comprehensive listing of all its atomic sites, factories and weapons \u2014 which American intelligence agencies would immediately compare with their own estimates.
The complexity of the ensuing verification would depend on how extensive a \u201cdisarmament\u201d Mr. Trump has in mind \u2014 and whether it matches Mr. Kim\u2019s definition.
Everyone agrees that such a program of disarmament would involve the North surrendering its nuclear arms. But American intelligence agencies have vastly differing estimates of the size of the arsenal, be it the C. I. A.\u2019s assessment of around 20 nuclear weapons or the Defense Intelligence Agency\u2019s estimate of about 60. That means it is possible that inspectors will never know for sure if they have found everything.
So far, the Trump administration has not said whether North Korea would have to dismantle most or all of its nuclear-fuel production facilities, which are believed to be far more numerous than Iran\u2019s. Nor is it clear whether the North would have to give up its missiles.
North Korea is also believed to possess large stores of germ weapons and nerve gas, like the kind used to assassinate Mr. Kim\u2019s half brother in an attack last year in Malaysia.
But it is the sprawling nuclear complex that poses the largest problem. Inspectors at the I. A. E. A. are not trained to recognize or handle nuclear weapons; they are basically forensic accountants, keeping track of uranium and plutonium flows through factories and of equipment that can be used to produce nuclear fuel.
Ridding the North of its warheads would require military specialists from the Western nuclear states \u2014 including \u201crender safe\u201d teams trained to prevent arms from detonating \u2014 as well as possible agreements with China or Russia to take the weapons.
Even so, the agency is likely to be overwhelmed.
Last year, Tero Varjoranta, the chief inspector of the Vienna-based agency, told nuclear experts that piercing North Korea\u2019s secretive maze would \u201crequire novel and modified monitoring and verification approaches to be developed, and probably implemented, at short notice in a very challenging environment.\u201d
The agency now monitors the nuclear activities of 180 nations with a corps of some 300 inspectors, including the 80 assigned to its Iran Task Force.
Western experts put the North\u2019s total number of nuclear sites \u2014 including its main atomic center at Yongbyon, its mountain testing complex and a number of clandestine labs and facilities \u2014 at 40 to 100, according to the R AND report .
Iran, by contrast, has about a dozen significant sites and never developed nuclear weapons. Nor did Iraq.
That is just one metric to explain why the denuclearization of North Korea has \u201cno good parallels\u201d in disarmament history, said David A. Kay, a nuclear expert who in 2003 and 2004 led the American hunt for unconventional arms in Iraq.
The goal of nuclear dismantlement in North Korea, Dr. Kay said in an interview, \u201cis far more complex than anything the administration is talking about,\u201d because its atomic complex is so large, so advanced \u2014 and in some cases, so well hidden.
The North\u2019s atomic industrial site currently sprawls over nearly four square miles and has some 400 buildings \u2014 a vast maze largely unknown to the outside world, and one that is much larger than most American weapon laboratories.
At least two buildings hold reactors, one credited with making the plutonium that fueled some of North Korea\u2019s atom bombs. E xperts say the site is now inaugurating a large new reactor.
At Mount Mantap, a mile-high peak, the North dug a system of deep tunnels for testing its nuclear bombs. Six have been tested so far.
Experts suspect the most recent, in September, was a hydrogen bomb. There is sharp disagreement over whether the gargantuan blast made the site unusable; new evidence suggests the mountain can support new rounds of explosive testing.
The 2014 RAND study, conducted for the United States Army, imagined the North\u2019s collapse and a military rush to secure and remove its weapons of mass destruction. The troop estimates were driven by the need to secure the nuclear sites, though the study also looked at North Korea\u2019s chemical and biological arms, as well as long-range missiles.
In addition, the study took into account a wide range of expected opposition and hostility from North Korea\u2019s military. It put the American force requirements at 73,000 troops in a situation where it was unclear how they would be received, or up to 273,000 if there was active resistance. Currently, the U nited States keeps about 28,000 troops in South Korea.
Dr. Kay, the head of the American hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons, estimated that up to 300 inspectors would be needed in the North. But he said that it would be difficult to find enough specialists with the requisite skills and experience.
\u201cFrankly,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\u2019s a limit to the talent pool.\u201d
To succeed with a relatively small force of inspectors, Dr. Kay said the North\u2019s denuclearization program would require the nation\u2019s \u201cfull cooperation,\u201d to free inspectors from what he called the arduous task of hunting down clandestine sites and outwitting other aspects of \u201cdeception and denial.\u201d
In the end, Dr. Kay said, a successful case of atomic verification would probably rely extensively on the North Koreans themselves \u2014 as only they understood the real dimensions of their sprawling nuclear complex.
The inspections, he added, would probably come down to monitoring how North Korean experts go about the denuclearization.
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be like Iraq, where we\u2019d find something and destroy it,\u201d Dr. Kay said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be coming in as observers of what the North is going to do, and that will let you keep the numbers small. It will be looking over their shoulders.\u201d
Dr. Kay said that such an outcome is \u201cprobably all right if all you want is a Nobel Peace Prize\u201d \u2014 as Mr. Trump has welcomed.
But, he added, it would not be enough to reach the demanding standard of obtaining hard proof that a country has gotten rid of all its nuclear arms and the complicated means of producing them.
\u201cI\u2019m not sure that\u2019s what they mean by denuclearization,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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