North Korea Begins Shut Down of Yongbyon

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea was expected to begin disabling its nuclear facilities Monday, marking the biggest step the communist country has ever taken to scale back its atomic program.

The North shut down its sole functioning nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July, and promised to disable it by year's end in exchange for energy aid and political concessions from other members of talks on its nuclear program: the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Disabling the reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, would mark a further breakthrough in efforts to convince the North to scale back its nuclear program. The country conducted its first-ever nuclear test in October of last year.

Hill said the U.S. intends to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula while President Bush is still in power, and that North Korea — one of the world's most isolated countries — appeared to be opening up. To disable the program, the facilities must be stripped sufficiently that it would take at least a year for North Korea to start them up again, Hill said.

Hill added the U.S. hoped to disable North's uranium enrichment program by Dec. 31, not just its plutonium-production facilities at Yongbyon.

The envoy said American lawyers were working with North Korea to prepare to remove it from a U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism, but that Pyongyang ultimately needed to meet requirements stipulated under U.S. law. Taking Pyongyang off the terror list, long a key demand of the North, was one of a series of economic and political concessions offered for the country to disable its nuclear reactor that produces plutonium for bombs.