One of the agreements that is hoped to come out of the inter-Korean summit is for Kim Jong-un to promise denuclearization.
But the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of Pyongyang's nuclear program, which some have called for, is likely to be more than a little difficult, according to Professor Suh Kune-yull.
Our Kwon Jang-ho sat down with the expert from Seoul National University for his take on the matter. Professor, thank you for making the time to speak to us today.

Thanks for having me.

CVID, Complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization. It's a term that's been mentioned a lot recently concerning North Korea's denuclearization program. Can you briefly explain what it is and how it could be achieved?

When it comes to whether they can do it or not your guess is as good as mine. Complete - it was added in 2003, because at the time North Korea was also doing uranium enrichment. So completely is not just plutonium but also enriched uranium has to be looked into.
Verifiable - Of course, they should be - they meaning the International Atomic Energy Agency or maybe the United States, maybe even the United Nations - should be able to check where those materials are, where those facilities are. Third, last but not least, irreversible - the program has to be completely destroyed so that they could never, ever be able to make it back.

So I'm getting from you that perhaps complete CVID might not be possible. But then how far of the process can we do? What can we do?


We're talking about a pretty little mass of uranium and plutonium. It's less than the size of a watermelon. Now, they are spread all over in North Korea. And there's no knowing where they really are unless they tell the truth. Now irreversible, how can we make it irreversible totally? The program is already hard to reverse. In fact, what I'm saying is that, they have already crossed the river of no return.

When you say they have crossed the point of no return, why is that? Why is it irreversible now?


Because irreversible means that the nation should never be able to make it back. Then again that means those personnel, actually the brains, scientists, engineers, technologists , or even technicians, have to be totally wiped out of the country.
That's the only way. Just changing their jobs for a while that doesn't make sense, because they can always come back, any time. So for the time being they could be talking about maybe disarmament, but denuclearization or dismantlement is pretty hard to achieve

We've been down this road before. We've tried to denuclearize North Korea before. (Many times) Many times.
What lessons can we take from the previous attempts to try and denuclearize North Korea? What can we do differently this time?


I… again it's a great question because this is not the first time, maybe the sixth time around. We've been dancing this dance for 25 years. So what's the difference t