A History of Korea (108 page)

The six-party nations began a second round of talks on 25 February 2004 in Beijing, and these also ended without success. Preventing further progress was North Korea’s alleged highly enriched uranium (
HEU
) program, which, it turned out, was based on nuclear technology it had secretly received from top Pakistani nuclear physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan. On 4 February, Khan revealed that he had sold the technology for enriching uranium not only to North Korea but also to Iran and Libya. North Korea continued to deny the existence of its
HEU
program, while the United States insisted that North Korea’s
HEU
program put bilateral relations more at stake than even North Korea’s plutonium-based nuclear program. Indeed, it was North Korea’s alleged admission of such a program to the United States in October 2002 that triggered the second nuclear impasse.

The third round of the six-party talks was held on 23–26 June 2004, also in Beijing. The United States proposed a detailed and gradual plan offering North Korea energy aid from South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan, along with a security guarantee and talks to end North Korea’s economic and political isolation in exchange for North Korea’s complete dismantling of its nuclear weapons program. The United States called for North Korea to abandon all nuclear programs, including the
HEU
program, and to take initial steps toward dismantlement during the initial three-month preparatory period. In its own proposal, the North countered by asking for substantial energy assistance from the United States and for immediate compensation, including lifting economic sanctions and removing North Korea from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. North Korea continued to deny the existence of an
HEU
program. As before, there were no important breakthroughs.

After the third round of talks, both North Korea and the United States reiterated their positions, the former asking the United States to drop its hostile policy and the latter calling on North Korea to follow the path set by Libya, which had relinquished nuclear programs for economic rewards. Mutual animosity brought about strong verbal exchanges, with President Bush, during his presidential campaign in August 2004, calling Kim Jong-il a “tyrant” and North Korea labeling Bush a “political idiot.” Under these circumstances the failure to hold a fourth round of talks came as no surprise.

The logjam finally seemed to break when the fourth round of talks was finally held in September 2005. In the Six-Party Statement of 19 September 2005, North Korea agreed to end its nuclear program in return for security and economic and energy benefits. But the statement did not address the core issue regarding the timing of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs. The United States claimed before and after the statement that the dismantling process should be an early stage in a settlement process. North Korea strongly maintained that it would not dismantle its nuclear facilities until light-water reactors were physically constructed.

After the fifth round of talks, in November 2005, North Korea declared its boycott of the six-party talks, demanding that the United States rescind its punitive measures against the Banco Delta Asia in Macau, including its in-depth investigation of the bank’s illegal transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department charged that the Banco Delta Asia was involved in illegal North Korean activities, including counterfeiting U.S. currency and drug trafficking. North Korea also proposed bilateral talks with the United Sates, but the United States would
only agree to talks within the strict six-party framework. In short, the new approach of multilateral talks to cope with the North Korean nuclear weapons problem was an utter failure. To accomplish its goals, North Korea decided to raise the stakes in the nuclear poker game.

On 9 October 2006 North Korea announced that it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon. This came six days after its Foreign Ministry issued a statement, on 3 October, declaring that it would conduct a nuclear test in the future. Other governments and private nuclear experts confirmed that a nuclear explosion had occurred somewhere in North Korea, a less than one kiloton plutonium (not a uranium) bomb, with about 3 to 4 percent of the explosive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. A number of experts postulated that the test had been successful and that only a portion of the plutonium in the bomb had been detonated. Some experts speculated that North Korea might have tried to test the prototype of a small nuclear warhead. On 8 December 2006 U.S. President George W. Bush officially announced that North Korea had detonated a nuclear explosive device.

The nuclear test came after North Korea conducted multiple tests of missiles on 4 July 2006, in which a long-range Taep’odong missile failed but short-range Scud and medium-range Nodong missiles were successful. North Korea’s missile launchings refocused U.S. attention on that country’s missile program and demonstrated the communist country’s apparent attempts to develop long-range missiles that could strike U.S. territories. U.S. officials claimed, in September 2003, that North Korea had produced the Taep’odong II missile in order to reach Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast. But the apparent failure of the Taep’odong missile launched in July indicated that North Korea had not succeeded in developing such long-range missiles. Evaluations of all seven of the short-range missiles by U.S. and other government intelligence agencies reportedly concluded, however, that North Korea had increased the accuracy of its Scud and Nodong missiles and had displayed the capability of North Korea’s operational command and control systems for coordinating multiple missile launchings at diverse targets. North Korea’s nuclear test also came amid its boycott of the six-party talks, which North Korea had justified since November 2005 by demanding that the United States end its pressure against foreign banks that accepted North Korea’s money and allowed the country to have accounts.

Experts on North Korea speculated that the communist country probably would have several motives for conducting a nuclear test. The North Korean military might press for both missile and nuclear tests; North Korean leaders might be motivated to conduct a nuclear test to restore their country’s “prestige” after the failure of the Taep’odong missile test; and, diplomatically, North Korea might seek to push the United States to accept bilateral talks and end its pressure on banks that, reportedly, was restricting the flow of foreign exchange to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. North Korea also might attempt to embarrass the Bush administration before the November 2006 U.S. congressional elections.

International reaction to the nuclear test was harsh. Even China, North Korea’s main patron and provider of aid, openly criticized the Stalinist country. The United States immediately condemned the nuclear test and called for a swift response from the
U.N.
Security Council. At the United Nations, the United States pushed for punitive sanctions and drafted a sanctioning resolution that was eventually adopted. On 15 October 2006 the
U.N.
Security Council passed a resolution that included sanctions and the possibility of coercive action against North Korea.

Following the nuclear test, strenuous Chinese diplomacy produced a meeting in Beijing between the chief U.S. and North Korean negotiators on 31 October 2006. Then the sixth six-party talks resumed on 18 December of that year. The negotiations ended on 22 December, without progress. North Korea refused to negotiate on the nuclear issue until the United States agreed to end financial sanctions.

In January 2007 the chief negotiators of the United States and North Korea held a meeting to resume the six-party talks in Berlin. In late January a meeting took place between U.S. and North Korean working-level negotiators to resolve the problem of the frozen North Korean assets held by the Banco Delta Asia. The two countries made significant progress at the Berlin meeting, raising hopes of further progress in the next six-party talks. The seventh six-party talks, held in February 2007, produced even more progress, and on 13 February the six-party nations reached an agreement on steps for North Korea to end its nuclear weapons development program. North Korea promised to shut down and seal its main nuclear facilities at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n within 60 days. For the initial steps, North Korea would receive 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent in food and other aid. North Korea also had to provide a complete list of its nuclear programs and disable all existing nuclear facilities. In return, it would
receive 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or the equivalent in food and other assistance. After 60 days, foreign ministers of six countries would meet to confirm the implementation of the agreement and discuss security cooperation in Northeast Asia. Separately the United States pledged to North Korea that it would resolve within 30 days a dispute over U.S. charges that Banco Delta Asia had laundered illicit North Korean money. This represented a retreat for the United States, which had previously insisted that the banking dispute was a lawenforcement matter that had to be treated separately from nuclear diplomacy.

The nuclear agreement was considered the first meaningful step toward North Korea’s denuclearization since the six-party talks began in 2003. But doubts were expressed about proclaiming that the nuclear deal was a breakthrough for dismantling the North Korean nuclear weapons program, as the accord had incentives only and there was no punishment if North Korea failed to comply. The agreement left for future negotiations the question of what to do with North Korea’s declared nuclear weapons, estimated to be as many as ten bombs for a stockpile of perhaps 50 kilograms of plutonium, plus the nation’s suspected
HEU
program. Concerns were raised that North Korea would not agree to turn over its nuclear weapons, which it considered its main bargaining chip with the United States and Kim Jong-il’s only insurance policy against being toppled as the country’s leader.

In mid-March 2007 North Korea announced that it would begin shutting down its main nuclear reactor only after the United States lifted sanctions on North Korean funds that had been frozen in Banco Delta Asia since 2005. After concluding a year-and-a-half investigation into the bank, the U.S. Treasury Department returned $25 million in frozen North Korean funds, rumored to be Kim Jong-il’s personal money. It was speculated that Kim had used the frozen money to lavish gifts on those in his inner circle. The settlement of the standoff over the frozen funds seemed to clear the way for talks to focus on putting in place the nuclear disarmament accord concluded on 13 February 2007.

In mid-July 2007 North Korea shut down its main nuclear reactor at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n, readmitted a permanent international inspection team, and received the first shipment of 6,200 tons of heavy oil. The North Korean action had positive ramifications for the six-party talks that would determine the nation’s second stage for scrapping its nuclear weapons program, held in Beijing on 18 July. As the next steps, North Korea, in return for large shipments of additional fuel oil, was to permanently disable the reactor so that it could no longer produce plutonium for additional nuclear weapons. Before it reached that step, however,
it was also supposed to issue a complete declaration of all nuclear assets, including the number of weapons that it might have produced since 2003. At this point, many observers were skeptical about North Korea’s commitment to complete denuclearization.

On 3 October 2007, in a joint statement closing the six-party talks, North Korea promised to dismantle all its nuclear facilities and disclose all its past and present nuclear programs by the end of the year, in return for 950,000 tons of fuel oil or its equivalent in economic aid. After the disabling of all nuclear facilities, the disclosure of its nuclear arsenal would be the next stage in a road-map to make North Korea nuclear-free. As expected, North Korea did not submit a declaration of its nuclear program by that date. This demonstrated the country’s penchant for tough bargaining. A sticking point in North Korea’s declaration of nuclear capacity appeared to be whether it had an
HEU
program; North Korea denied that it had a clandestine program, but the United States claimed there was evidence to the contrary. Also disputed was how much weapons-grade plutonium North Korea had managed to accumulate. Furthermore, in late April 2008, the United States disclosed details of suspected cooperation between North Korea and Syria in building a nuclear reactor that was later destroyed by an Israeli air strike in September 2007. North Korea firmly denied any nuclear link between the two countries.

In early May 2008 North Korea conveyed the full details of its weapons-grade plutonium programs to the United States, and, in return, the United States provided more than 500,000 tons of food aid. Then, in late June 2008, North Korea submitted its declaration of nuclear programs. The United States welcomed the declaration and announced that, as promised, it would delete North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism and would terminate North Korea’s inclusion in the Trading with the Enemy Act. In a show of commitment to denuclearization, North Korea demolished an outdated cooling tower in its main nuclear site at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n on 27 June 2008.

North Korea was six months late filing the declaration of its nuclear programs and omitted much of the information originally demanded. The 60-page declaration did not address three key international concerns—a list of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, a possible
HEU
program, and the suspected sale of nuclear technology to other countries, including Syria. This raised concerns that North Korea was really not on the path of abandoning its nuclear programs. In any case, the six-party nations failed to agree on a detailed inspection program to verify that North Korea had dismantled its plutonium-based program producing
fissile material for nuclear weapons. The United States then postponed the removal of North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism, as North Korea did not agree on a verification regime for the declared nuclear programs and stockpiles. On 10 October 2008, however, the United States removed North Korea from the terrorism blacklist in an effort to salvage the stalled six-party talks on ending the communist country’s nuclear programs.