KEDO discussions took place at the level of a U.S.Assistant Secretary of State, South Korea's deputyforeign minister, and the head of the Asian bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry.
The KEDO Secretariat was located in New York.[2] KEDO was shut down in 2006.
Formal ground breaking on the site for two light water reactors (LWR) was on August 19, 1997, atKumho, 30 km north ofSinpo.[3][4] The Kumho site had been previously selected for two similar sized reactors that had been promised in the 1980s by theSoviet Union, before its collapse.[5]
Soon after the Agreed Framework[6] was signed,U.S. Congress control changed to theRepublican Party, who did not support the agreement.[7][8] Some RepublicanSenators were strongly against the agreement, regarding it asappeasement.[9][10] KEDO's first director,Stephen Bosworth, later commented "The Agreed Framework was a political orphan within two weeks after its signature".[11]
Arrangingproject financing was not easy, and formal invitations to bid were not issued until 1998, by which time the delays were infuriating North Korea.[12] Significant spending on the LWR project did not commence until 2000,[13] with "First Concrete" pouring at theconstruction site on August 7, 2002.[14] Construction of both reactors was well behind the original schedule.
In the wake of the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in 2003, KEDO largely lost its function. KEDO ensured that the nuclear power plant project assets at the construction site atKumho in North Korea and at manufacturers' facilities around the world ($1.5 billion invested to date) were preserved and maintained. The project was reported to be about 30% complete. One reactorcontainment building was about 50% complete and another about 15% finished. No key equipment for the reactors had been moved to the site.
In 2005, there were reports indicating that KEDO had agreed in principle to terminate the light-water reactor project. On January 9, 2006, it was announced that the project was over and the workers would be returning to their home countries. North Korea demanded compensation and has refused to return the approximately $45 million worth of equipment left behind.[15]
^"Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization"(PDF),Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes, Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2003,archived(PDF) from the original on July 27, 2011, retrievedMarch 5, 2011
