The Nuclear Barter
The June 12 statement of the external affairs ministry welcomed the US-North Korea summit as paving the way for peace in the Korean peninsula, but reminded the world of the dark history of a Rawalpindi-Pyongyang nexus that saw one of the worst cases of proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. ‘We also hope the resolution of the Korean Peninsula issue will take into account and address our concerns about proliferation linkages extending to India’s neighbourhood,’ the MEA said in the statement.
At first, it appeared to be a case of cash-strapped North Korea hawking its missile arsenal. On June 29, 1999, suspicious Indian customs officials in the port city of Kandla discovered that, in addition to a shipment of sugar, a North Korean merchant vessel was carrying road and rail-mobile short-range ballistic missiles in over 100 crates to Karachi.
In 2004, the US exposed the outlines of the world’s largest nuclear proliferation ring, operated by Pakistani physicist Dr A.Q. Khan. Khan had stolen uranium enrichment secrets from the Dutch laboratory he worked for during the 1970s was now selling them to rogue nations—Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. It was a deadly barter. Khan gave the North Koreans uranium enrichment technology in return for technology to build the 1,500 km range Nodong ballistic missiles which Pakistan produced as the Ghauri. The nuclear-tipped Ghauri and its successor missiles allowed Pakistan to target large parts of India.
While the Pakistani government denied all knowledge of Khan’s proliferation network, there were clear signs that the missiles-for-nuclear technology swap couldn’t have been done without the explicit knowledge of the Pakistan Army. Pakistan Air Force C-130 transport planes made multiple trips to North Korea at Khan’s behest and the physicist himself made 13 trips to the secluded dictatorship between 1997 and 2004. Khan was later pardoned by the Pakistani establishment but the seeds of his proliferation activities saw North Korea test its first nuclear warhead in 2006, putting it firmly on the road to becoming a nuclear weapons power.