SEOUL, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- An international energy consortium is urging North Korea to pay compensation for a defunct nuclear power plant project, Seoul's media reports said Tuesday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) has asked the impoverished North for $1.9 billion in damages for its defunct project to build two atomic power plants in the North under a 1994 nuclear agreement.
"(KEDO) has sent a letter (to North Korea) following every meeting of its executive board of directors since (last) May, demanding compensation for its assets at the construction site" in North Korea, the news agency said, citing multiple diplomatic sources.
North Korea, however, has yet to respond to the demand, the sources were quoted as saying.
Under the 1994 agreement, North Korea pledged to freeze its Soviet-designed weapon-grade plutonium producing graphite-moderated reactors in return for a U.S. promise to build two safer 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors for North Korea.
KEDO, a consortium grouping South Korea, Japan, the European Union and the United States, was set up to implement the deal.
But the $4.6-billion project was officially scrapped early last year following the North's revival of nuclear activities in breach of the 1994 deal.
A total of $1.56 billion had been spent on the nuclear reactor project before its official termination, of which some $1.14 billion was shouldered by South Korea.
