Korea has an agreement for cooperation with 31 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Under the agreement, the obligated items must be used for peaceful purposes, comply with nuclear non-proliferation and international safeguards, and obtain prior consent of shipment in case of enrichment, reprocessing, retransfer. Among them, the United States, Canada, and Australia have signed Administrative Arrangements of Cooperation Agreements (Supplementary Arrangements in Canada) for the international transfer and annual reports of obligated items. When operators submit an annual report, the government compiles and make the annual report based on the data. Ideally, the final report is submitted by the operator should be the national annual report, but in practice, discrepancies occur between sum of the operator’s and goverment’s. In order to resolve these problems and strengthen the linkage between exports contrpol and safeguards, our institute has begun the project to develop an ‘Obligation Tracking System for internationally controlled items (OTS)’. It is believed that obligated items which are unnecessarily included or omitted in annual report could be managed properly by developing OTS for life cycle of the items such as import, disposal/ termination or transfer to other countries. In case of nuclear material, especially, the characteristics of the facilities (e.g., bulk-handling facilities) must be considered and principles of fungibility, equivalence, and proportionality should be applied to materials. In order to computerize these procedures, we would like to propose to adopt the format of Code 10 for obligated item management. Code 10 is the form of the annex to the Korea-IAEA safeguards agreement which includes all records of inventory changes, import/export, and domestic movement of nuclear materials. It is expected to minimize discrepancies between operators’ annual reporting data and national annual reporting and further contribute to enhancing national trust and nuclear transparency.

Strategic item export control aims to maintain international peace and safety and serves as a significant nuclear non-proliferation regime that directly impacts a nation’s security. Therefore, establishing an autonomous export control system at the state level is crucial, and one of the most efficient methods to achieve this is by enhancing an export company’s management system. Accordingly, many advanced countries, such as the United States, Europe, and Japan, have operated their own internal compliance programs (CP or ICP) to manage and screen the export of strategic items as a corporate social responsibility and risk mitigation measure. In Korea, which has a high dependence on trade, the need for CP was continuously confirmed, but the system was introduced in 2004, relatively late compared to other advanced countries. So far, the Korean government has made steady efforts to develop and establish the system and is actively encouraging businesses to obtain Compliance Program certification to autonomously manage strategic items. Major technologically advanced countries utilize technology transfer as a tool for economic sanctions, trade security, and strategic technology management, and they continue to strengthen their control regimes. In these countries, CP certification is considered a standard practice for export control among mid-sized and large enterprises. It serves as a vital risk management system that protects companies from unforeseen incidents. However, in Korea, the application of CP under the Foreign Trade Act is limited to dual-use items and does not extend to the nuclear export control system. Therefore, this paper analyzes international cases and CP requirements in countries like the United States, Japan, Europe, and Singapore. As a result of the review, the application of CP into Korea’s nuclear export control could be a coexistence means that can strengthen supply chain control as well as provide benefits not to impede technical research, international trade, and exchanges.

In compliance with the amended export control of strategic items and technology in Jan. 2014, KAERI should pay attention to the export control of ITT (Intangible Technology Transfer). To control an ITT (Intangible Technologies Transfer) effectively and efficiently, the Korean government encourages the R&D institute and universities obtaining the ICP (Internal Compliance Program) from the relevant authority, MOTIE. This means that the exporters can control the ITT by themselves, because the exporters know very well the counterparts of the trading and the exporting items and technologies. In fact, ICP is for export control of dual-use items and technology in Korea. However, KAERI has tried to obtain a license from the authority, MOTIE. In an effort to do so, KAERI completed enacting a new internal self–regulation for export controls in 2016, and proceeded to apply for an ‘AA’ license of ICP in 2017 and obtained the ICP license in 2018 and re-obtained the license in 2021 from the MOTIE. In light of KAERI’s case, to obtain the ‘AA’ license of ICP is one of the best methods to increase the ability of export controls. As of now, there is no R&D institutes sponsored by the Korean government to obtain the ‘AA’ license of ICP except KAERI. KAERI can provide the actual methods as a standard case to the R&D institutes in Korea for obtaining an ‘AA’ license of ICP. According to the internal regulation of KAERI for export control, KAERI implemented an inner self-audit for export control in Nov. 2022. This is the first real self-audit for export control at KAERI. The main purpose of the self-audit is to check the transfer management of ITT and the relationship of relevant office through the interview of the staffs in the ICP organization. KAERI self-audit planed specifically and implemented for the achievement of the basic principal of selfaudit. The specific contents of this self-audit is as follows - The interview of the relevant offices: physical protection office, manpower planning office, manpower management office, nuclear education and training center, technology transfer office and international cooperation office, nuclear control and management office - Building the self-audit checklist considering the characteristics of each office - The confirmation of the inner procedure and the status of management on the export controls Through the interview of the relevant office, KAERI checked the inner procedure and the status of management on the export controls and tried to provide the supplementary measures of each relevant offices. The followings are the main results of the inner self-audit implemented in Nov. 2022. - Generally, the staffs know the meaning and relevant regulation such as foreigner’s management and the intangible technology transfer - Each office reflects the necessities of export controls on the relevant regulation and procedures and make DB for the proper duty. However, there is no indication for export controls on the DB - In the case of foreigner’s temporary visit for simple work and site tour, there is a difficult situation not to be able to check all the visitors by checking the denial lists - If necessary, KAERI may build the TFT (Task force Team) for the efficiency of export controls - Others

The main purpose of the Bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement is to obtain the prior consent of suppliers in the case of peaceful use of items covered by the agreement, application of IAEA safeguards, reprocessing, enrichment or transfer to a third country. Reports on inventory changes and status for mutually transferred obligated items should be exchanged annually. According to the Agreement, items subject to bilateral agreement information must be exchanged with each other prior to direct or indirect transfer of controlled items. And the importing country proceeds with prior confirmation. After that, upon receipt of the target item, shipment notification and shipment confirmation are made, and an annual report on the target item is made. Such as the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), annual reporting and management of obligated items are made centered on institutions that use a lot of nuclear materials. But there are cases of delays in the agreement work due to the implementation, and discrepancies in data are occurring in the process of checking inventory details of obligated items. In addition, it was difficult to check the inventory of items subject to the agreement and the status of Export and Import status online, making it impossible for managers to monitor all aspects of bilateral agreements. Currently, there is generated to inconsistent in information between the annual report and the international transfer report in terms of Export and Import control. To solve these problems, KAERI is aim of promoting transparency in the international nuclear power sector and enhancing national reliability. And It is planning to establish an Export and Import management system for items subject to bilateral. In order to ensure the accuracy, it is going to enhance the efficiency of management methods such as new registration for new institutions when exporting and Importing items. This has the ultimate purpose of improving the efficiency of the implementation of the agreement items through the systemization of the database of agreement items and the management of the implementation of the agreement based on the sincere and timely implementation of the agreement.

The bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement provides the basis for technical and economic exchanges and research and development cooperation in the nuclear industry, while also having an important role in the peaceful use of nuclear power. The government of Republic of Korea has signed the supplementary and additional arrangements with the United States, Canada, and Australia to specify detailed procedures necessary for the implementation of the agreement. Currently, items under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement (i.e., obligated items) are managed through official documents and e-mails, and it is difficult for the government to systemically track item inventory and identify the person in charge. Another issue is the discrepancy of information between the annual report on obligated items and the report under the import and export procedure. In order to solve these problems, the government is establishing an import and export management system for obligated items to enhance transparency and national reliability in Korea. The ultimate purpose of this project is to not only faithfully fulfill the obligations under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement, but also to increase the efficiency of implementation work through systematization of databases and management of obligated items. In this paper, an improved management procedures are suggested by analyzing the required functions and problems. Also, this paper provides a conceptual design that can be applied to the management system for it obligated items by identifying and analyzing practical problems in the import and export management of mandatory items. As a result, key considerations and the conceptual design proposal for the ‘export and import management system for items subject to the nuclear bilateral cooperation agreement’ are derived. The result will be supplemented through continuous discussions with facility operators and the government to be utilized for detailed system design.