China Holds Ethnic Koreans for Attempted Uranium Sale

Chinese police last month arrested two men on charges of trying to sell 1 kg of enriched uranium, an essential raw material for nuclear weapons, press reports said Monday. The two were ethnic Koreans living in China, police in Beijing confirmed. Press reports said Beijing police arrested the two men, identified as Chang and Chung, on charges of attempting to sell 969.03 grams of enriched uranium at a hotel there on Sept. 11.

Beijing police said initial investigations found the enriched uranium probably came from Russia, but sources there say the possibility that it came from North Korea can’t be ruled out. One source said a considerable number of ethnic Koreans in China are involved in smuggling with North Korea. “I actually met someone in a Chinese border town who asked me to find a buyer for the material and told me, ‘I have enriched uranium smuggled from North Korea.’”

Uranium naturally occurs in two isotopes: U-238 (99.3 percent), and U-235 (0.7 percent). When the latter is enriched at 3-4 percent purity, it can be used for nuclear power plants, and with more than 90 percent purity, it becomes a raw material for nuclear weapons. It is not known at what purity the seized uranium was enriched. Some 15-17 kg are needed to produce nuclear weapons, but the seized amount was less than 1 kg. When U.S. envoy James Kelly visited Pyongyang in 2002, the North allegedly admitted to having its own highly enriched uranium program.

Lots of things are on sale in N. Korea.
Would NK regime would be on sale?

On the other hand, the uranium in question may have come from a different source such as former Soviet Union.

Quite honestly, China itself is duplitious and too many lawmakers and media reps have a short memory.

China provided sensitive tech to both Pakistan and Iran back in the mid to late '90s. China even defied our pleadings and continued to negotiate with Iran. What did China receive for this? Clinton certified China's nonproliferation status, a move which enabled the administration to export more missile and space tech to China! We also gifted China with a renewal of its most favored nation trading status!

This all happened on Clinton's watch around the time Paula Jones' lawsuit first kicked in right up until his actual impeachment. Of Course, Congress screamed a little and then shut up long enough to grant China most favored nation status yet again...

I bring this up only because I do not hear China mentioned at all when we discuss Pakistan's success as a nuke nation, nor is China brought up as far as actually aiding Iran's nuclear intentions (and maybe even those of North Korea). To me, China is complicit in all of this.

And we are complicit in the rise of Red China, both because we foolishly gave them sensitive tech to supplement what their dandy spies could not steal AND because we enrich Red China by living in a land drowning in items bearing Made in China tags.

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