156 Billion Won Power Push Drove North Korea Toward Atomic Bomb
By Roy Castellano ·
Pyongyang masked a hidden intention to produce an atomic bomb by lobbying the Soviet Union and China for hardware to match South Korea's industrial expansion.
Construction began in March 1971 at Gori, near Busan. By May 1978, the first South Korean nuclear power plant was complete. The timeline was precise: the reactor and turbines were set in October 1974, and the first shipment of enriched uranium for test operations arrived in June 1975. This was not a boutique project or a scientific curiosity. It was the opening move of a long-range industrial strategy designed to carry the Republic of Korea into the next century.
According to a report from the Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry—provided as a published English translation from the Cold War International History Project—the Gori plant was merely the vanguard. The South Korean government had already drafted a plan to build 26 nuclear power plants by the year 2000. The first stage of this expansion was slated to run through 1986, with the goal of adding one plant per year.
March 1971
The scale of the ambition was matched by the scale of the investment. To meet the 1986 targets, the plan called for an expenditure of 156 billion won and 174 million US$. The funding and technical expertise didn't come from a single source, but from a coordinated effort of Western industrial power. The primary investors included the American Westinghouse Electric Corp. and ITT, the British GEC, and various French firms. These partnerships were supplemented by the creation of the Korea Nuclear Energy Co., ensuring that the local industrial base grew alongside the imported technology.
This early push established the foundation for what is now a pillar of the South Korean economy. Public records show that nuclear power currently provides 30% of the country's electricity, with a total generation capacity of 20.5 GWe across 23 reactors. While the 1970s planners aimed for 26 plants by 2000, the actual trajectory of the grid reflects the same relentless drive for energy independence and industrial capacity that Ferenc Szabó, the Hungarian Ambassador to Pyongyang, observed decades ago.
Westinghouse and the 156 Billion Won
The report highlights a specific target for the end of 1986: a total electric power generation output of 20 million kW. At the time of the report, the output—including the Gori plant—stood at 6.59 million kW. To bridge that gap, the government planned a diversified energy portfolio: seven nuclear plants, five hydroelectric stations, 24 thermal power stations, and an ebb and flow power plant.
For a targeting analyst, these numbers are more than just utility statistics; they are the prerequisites for a modern military-industrial complex. You cannot sustain a high-tech defense posture or a heavy manufacturing sector without a massive, reliable surplus of baseload power. The Western companies—Westinghouse and GEC in particular—were not just selling reactors; they were installing the engine of a regional powerhouse.
A Three-to-One Ratio
While the South was building, the North was watching. Ambassador Szabó’s report makes the comparison stark. If the South Korean output reached its 1986 goals, it would be approximately three times that of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), even accounting for the completion of the North's own seven-year plan.
This disparity created a strategic panic in Pyongyang. Szabó notes that the DPRK began strongly urging socialist countries to provide equipment for nuclear power plants or to build them outright. The list of targeted patrons included Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and China.
On the surface, Pyongyang framed these requests as a matter of economic parity—a desperate attempt to "make up for its lag behind South Korea." But Szabó, writing from the inside of the socialist bloc, saw the play for what it was. He reported that the DPRK operated with the "hidden intention that later it may become capable of producing an atomic bomb."
The document leaves us with a portrait of a regime attempting to mask a weapons program as a utility project. While the South was transparently partnering with Westinghouse and the French to power its factories, the North was lobbying its allies in the East for the same technology, hoping the cover of "power generation" would shield the development of a deterrent.
The record does not state which of the socialist nations yielded to these requests, only that the DPRK continued to press Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and China for the hardware necessary to close the gap.