A History of Korea (107 page)

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program first started under Kim Il-sung as a means to achieve hegemony over South Korea. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, North Korea shifted its focus to its own survival. When Kim Jong-il came into power, he promptly addressed the need for North Korea’s security, which explains his stubbornness to continue the nuclear program that his father started. North Korea had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (
NPT
) in 1985, and in January 1992 it also signed the Nuclear Safeguard Agreement, allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities. In late 1992, however, the
IAEA
found evidence that North Korea had reprocessed more plutonium than the 80 grams it had disclosed to the international watchdog. In February 1993 the
IAEA
called for a “special inspection” of two apparent nuclear waste sites at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n, but North Korea rejected the inspection and announced, on 12 March 1993, that it would withdraw from the
NPT
. At the same time, North Korea made it clear that the nuclear issues could be resolved at a high-level meeting between the United States and North Korea. On 2 June, a few days before North Korea’s withdrawal from the
NPT
was to take effect, Robert Gallucci, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political and Military Affairs, and North Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kang S
ŏ
k-chu began the first round of high-level talks in New York. As a result, on 11 June 1993, North Korea announced that it would not withdraw from the
NPT
.

The United States and North Korea held the second round of high-level talks on 14–19 July 1993 in Geneva. But the meeting produced no tangible results.
Thereafter, North Korea restricted international inspection of its nuclear facilities at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n, particularly its two undeclared sites (a fuel fabrication plant and a nuclear fuel storage facility). Frustrated by North Korean intransience, in March 1994 the
IAEA
presented the North Korean case to the
U.N.
Security Council. At this critical juncture, on 19 March, North Korea’s chief delegate at the eighth North–South Korean talks at P’anmunj
ŏ
m threatened that, if war broke out between the two nations, Seoul, not far from the
DMZ
, would be a “sea of fire.”

In May–June 1994 North Korea further aggravated the situation, by declaring that its nuclear facilities would never be opened to
IAEA
inspections, and it again threatened to withdraw from the
NPT
. On 15 June former U.S. president Jimmy Carter took on the role of peace mediator and entered North Korea through P’anmunj
ŏ
m. His visit to Pyongyang from 15 to 18 June appeared to be a turning point in the North Korean nuclear crisis, as it was reported that Kim Il-sung would not expel the
IAEA
inspectors from North Korea but would negotiate with the United States on the nuclear issues and have a summit meeting with South Korean President Kim Young-sam. Receiving new signals from Pyongyang, the United States sensed that it would be possible to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis through further negotiations.

The third round of high-level talks was convened on 8 July in Geneva. But the sudden death of Kim Il-sung on that very day caused an indefinite recess of the talks at the North Koreans’ request. In the third round of talks, starting on 5 August, the United States concentrated only on settling the North Korean nuclear crisis, whereas North Korea wanted to settle all the issues pending between the two nations. Following a recess on 12 August, talks resumed on 23 September. After many twists and turns, the two sides signed the Agreed Framework on 21 October 1994. The heart of the agreement was a U.S. commitment to provide North Korea with various economic and diplomatic benefits. In return, North Korea would halt the operations and infrastructure development of its nuclear program; freeze all its nuclear activity and open its nuclear facilities to
IAEA
inspections; terminate its construction plans for 50-megawatt and 200-megawatt nuclear reactors; suspend the replacement of spent fuel rods; seal off a radiochemical experimental laboratory where spent fuel rods were reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium; and place nuclear sites under
IAEA
supervision. To compensate North Korea for abandoning its nuclear weapons program, the United States promised to construct two 1,000-megawatt, light-water nuclear reactors under U.S. supervision and provide 500,000 tons of heavy oil annually
to provide energy to North Korea until the new reactors were operational. The cost of the two reactors, estimated at $4–5 billion, would be shouldered mostly by South Korea, whereas the total cost for the substitute energy, estimated at $300 million annually, would be paid by the United States.
⁶

Although the United States hailed the agreement, critics charged that it did not go far enough and left too many loopholes through which North Korea could clandestinely pursue a nuclear weapons program. The Agreed Framework did, at any rate, enable North Korea to attain its long-cherished desire to establish diplomatic talks with the United States. Emphasizing the importance of establishing normal relations between the two countries, North Koreans expressed their full satisfaction with the Agreed Framework.

As the impending nuclear crisis waned, the North Korean issue became centered on its economic and, possibly, national collapse. U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry likened North Korea to a disabled airliner rapidly losing altitude, and he called for seeking a “soft landing,” a gradual and orderly transformation of the communist country through reform.
⁷

In early 1996, to save itself from having to depend on its southern neighbor, North Korea asked the United States for aid, sending a message to the United States and South Korea that said, essentially, “Feed me or I’ll kill myself.” The United States was prepared to provide food aid to North Korea to ease the famine, as it feared that the prospect of mass starvation might make North Korea desperate, possibly prompting its hard-line war machine to launch a military strike against South Korea and the U.S. troops there.

By 1998 North Korea succeeded in developing a “Nodong” missile with an estimated range of up to 900 miles, capable of reaching all of South Korea and most of Japan. On 31 August 1998 North Korea test-fired a three-stage rocket, apparently the prototype of the Taep’odong I missile, at a launching site on the shores of the East Sea; the third stage was an attempt to launch a satellite. The satellite launch failed, but it raised concerns that North Korea had developed long-range missiles capable of striking Japan, Alaska, Guam, and the Northern Marianas with nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads.

The test launch of the Taep’odong I rocket shocked the United States, as just two weeks before the
New York Times
reported that U.S. intelligence had detected a suspicious site at K
ŭ
mch’ang-ni that might be considered a secret North Korean underground nuclear weapons facility. The possibility that the
Taep’odong I rocket could be given a nuclear warhead convinced the United States that North Korea had secretly continued its quest for nuclear weapons and could now deliver them via long-range missiles. Soon the United States demanded that it be allowed to inspect the underground complex. North Korea demanded an “admission fee,” in terms of food aid. After paying a price of 600,000 tons of food, the United States was allowed to inspect the K
ŭ
mch’ang-ni excavation in late May 1999. A month later, on 25 June, the U.S. State Department announced at last that the site at K
ŭ
mch’ang-ni contained no facilities related to nuclear weapons development.
⁸

The test launch of the Taep’odong I missile, however, caused the Clinton administration to undertake a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward North Korea. Known as the Perry Report, named after former secretary of defense William Perry who led the policy review team, the Perry initiative offered to normalize U.S–North Korean relations, end U.S. economic sanctions, and provide other economic benefits in return for North Korean concessions on the missile and nuclear issues.

The United States then pressed North Korea for talks concerning the nation’s missile program. In meetings held in 1999, North Korea demanded $1 billion annually in exchange for a promise not to export missiles. The United States rejected North Korea’s demand but offered to lift U.S. economic sanctions. This laid the groundwork for the Berlin agreement of September 1999, in which North Korea agreed to a moratorium on further missile tests in return for the lifting of major U.S. economic sanctions.

On 9–12 October 2000 North Korea’s Vice-Marshal Cho My
ŏ
ng-nok, first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission and number-two man in North Korea, visited the United States, and gave President Bill Clinton a personal letter from Kim Jong-il inviting Clinton to visit North Korea and resolve differences between the two countries. Clinton, who would soon leave office, sent his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, instead, and she visited Pyongyang on 23–24 October 2000.

During the visits by Cho and Albright to the United States and North Korea, North Korea proposed not to export medium- and long-range missiles and related technologies in return for “in-kind assistance” from the United States. It also offered to permanently ban missile tests and production above a certain range also in exchange for “in-kind assistance,” as well as for help in launching commercial satellites. North Korea also promised to cease the deployment of the Nodong and Taep’odong I missiles. The negotiations between two countries
stalled over the details of U.S. verification of a missile agreement and the nature and size of a U.S. financial compensation package.

A major problem in these negotiations was that Clinton would soon leave office, and there was insufficient time to expect a meaningful deal. In the final days of his presidency, Clinton could neither sign nor endorse any agreement on such weighty matters as the North Korean missile-related deal, and as North Korea dragged out the negotiations, it lost a rare opportunity for a rapprochement with the United States. The problem of North Korean weapons of mass destruction would further deteriorate in the next decade.

The arrival of President George W. Bush on the scene in January 2001 dramatically changed U.S. policy toward North Korea. In a hard-line approach, Bush publicly expressed his distrust of the secretive North Korean regime and demanded “verification” and “strict reciprocity” as conditions for resuming negotiations on the control of weapons of mass destruction and improvement in U.S.–North Korean relations. In particular, the Bush administration stressed that the Agreed Framework, which had been hailed as a major U.S. foreign policy achievement by its predecessor, should be reviewed and possibly renegotiated.

North Korea was one of the countries that had been ostracized, for historical and ideological reasons, from the U.S.-led global economic and political system. Although North Korea often expressed a desire to join the system, though gradually, the Bush administration had only one answer to North Korea’s gesture of reconciliation: “Disarm yourself, if you want food.”

In February 2001 North Korea defied the Bush administration by threatening to renege on its promise to suspend missile testing and to freeze the nuclear program. Understandably North Korea wanted President Bush to start where his predecessor, Clinton, had left off. Ruled only in accordance with the “will” of its leader, North Korea found it hard to understand how and why an agreement or promise between the two countries should turn into scraps of paper merely because of a change in government.

According to U.S. officials, North Korea admitted having a secret uranium enrichment program when U.S. officials, headed by James Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, visited Pyongyang in early October 2002. North Korea denied having made such an admission, but the United States retaliated by cutting off shipments of heavy oil to North Korea
in December 2002. The United States also suspended construction of the light-water reactors, terminating it completely in November 2005. In carefully calibrated steps to force the United States to the negotiating table, North Korea reactivated the plutonium-based nuclear program that had been shut down in 1994 under the Agreed Framework by restarting the five-megawatt nuclear reactor, announcing that it would restart the plutonium reprocessing plant, and removing 8,000 nuclear fuel rods from storage facilities. In late December 2002 North Korea expelled from the country
IAEA
inspectors who had been monitoring the freeze of the plutonium facilities. In January 2003 North Korea announced its withdrawal from the
NPT
.

In early 2003 the United States proposed multilateral talks, which became six-party talks hosted by China. Although North Korea stepped up pressure on the United States for direct negotiations, the United States proposed a multilateral approach by countries in the region, based on its past experience which had shown that a bilateral approach did not work. South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China would join the United States and North Korea in the six-party talks.

The talks began in August 2003 in Beijing, and there North Korea reportedly warned the United States that it would prove it had nuclear weapons by carrying out a nuclear test. The United States discounted the warning as a negotiating tactic. When the talks ended with no tangible progress, North Korea blamed the United States for making a one-sided demand that North Korea first dismantle its nuclear weapons in a “complete, verifiable, and irreversible” manner, and it repeatedly vowed to boost its nuclear deterrent force for self-defense unless the United States changed its hostile policy.