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By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

Seoul and Washington are reportedly coordinating on the specifics of a plan for revising the South Korea-US Atomic Energy Agreement, with the goal of completing the revision within the year.

Speaking with Washington correspondents from South Korean media outlets on June 19, a senior South Korean government official said the two sides would “work out their remaining differences through focused, small-scale discussions so that the negotiations are completed this year.”

The official’s remarks hinted that some progress has been made in past negotiations.

“They’ve exchanged several drafts, and they’re now working on narrowing their differences,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

But the same official also said no specifics on the content were available yet, mentioning only that the two sides “agreed to cooperate from a more strategic perspective on three areas: handling of spent nuclear fuel, a stable supply of nuclear power plant fuel, and cooperation on nuclear power exports.”

The official also spoke on one of the key issues, namely South Korea’s permission to engage in enrichment and reprocessing.

“Other things could be included in terms of other countries and agreement content, given the pursuit of a strategic partnership,” the official said.

That could be a hint that the results of the negotiations will be different from those for Vietnam, which recently made a political pledge to Washington not to attempt enrichment or reprocessing. It was also seen as a partial concession on the question of how to incorporate joint South Korea-US research findings on pyroprocessing technology for spent fuel reprocessing into the agreement. Further research and testing are still needed to determine if pyroprocessing will be a viable method.

But the official also cautioned that there were “many differences left to bridge” between the two sides.

Park No-byeok, South Korea’s ambassador for AEA negotiations, and US Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Thomas Countryman were the senior representatives attending the tenth round of nuclear pact amendment talks in Washington on June 17 and 18.

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