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The North Korean nuclear program remained small until the mid-1980s,
when a five megawatt (MW) "research reactor" -- a natural
uranium-fueled, gas-graphite moderated design ideally suited to
produce weapons plutonium -- entered into operation at Yongbyon. In
1985 North Korea acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
forswearing nuclear weapons and committing to conclude a safeguards
agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency within eighteen
months. When North Korea failed to meet that deadline, without
objection the IAEA extended the deadline for an additional eighteen
months. North Korea missed the subsequent deadline, too.
By 1989, concerns about North Korea’s nuclear activities had deepened,
as a plutonium reprocessing facility appeared at the Yongbyon nuclear
site. The United States consulted with its treaty allies, South Korea
and Japan, about the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation in North
Korea, and Tokyo agreed to condition improved relations with Pyongyang
on the latter’s restraint from engaging in plutonium reprocessing.
In September 1991
President Bush announced the unilateral withdrawal of all land- and
sea-based tactical nuclear weapons worldwide. President Roh Tae Wu of
South Korea then announced that no U.S. nuclear weapons existed in
South Korea. The Bush initiative unleashed a fertile period in
nuclear diplomacy in Korea. In December 1991, North and South Korea
signed a joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean
peninsula, an accord that proscribed both uranium enrichment and
plutonium reprocessing on both sides of the 38th Parallel.
In January 1992, the United States and South Korea agreed to cancel
the Team Spirit joint military exercise scheduled for that year.
Later that month, Under Secretary of State Arnold Kanter and senior
Workers’ Party official Kim Yong Sun held what at that time was the
highest-ranking meeting ever held between the U.S. and North Korean
officials. Following that meeting, North Korea finally concluded its
safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
Tensions on the peninsula, however, soon re-emerged. Washington had
conditioned any further discussions with Pyongyang on North Korean
progress in implementing IAEA safeguards and the North-South
Denuclearization Declaration. Pyongyang made its initial safeguards
declaration concerning its nuclear activities and materials to the
IAEA in May 1992, but in the following months IAEA inspectors
discovered discrepancies between that declaration and the data they
gained from other sources, including their own inspection
activities. Meanwhile, North-South talks on implementing the
Denuclearization Declaration bogged down without agreement. The North
sought a further high-level meeting with the United States, but was
rebuffed. South Korean announcement of a North Korean spy ring
operating in the South added an emotionally-charged element to the
tensions on the peninsula. In October, the United States and South
Korea decided to resume the Team Spirit exercise in 1993, further
souring relations with North Korea. In December, as South Koreans
went to the polls to elect their first civilian president in 30 years,
and the IAEA requested access to two nuclear waste sites
suspected to contain evidence of undisclosed North Korean reprocessing
of plutonium beyond that admitted in its declaration to the Agency.
The stand-off with
North Korea intensified in early 1993. In February, the IAEA Board of
Governors passed a resolution calling on North Korea to accept
“special inspections” to resolve the anomalies in the North Korean
declaration. North Korea demurred. On March 12, North Korea shocked
the world by announcing its withdrawal from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation, effective (as provided by the Treaty) in three
months’ time.
In May, the UN
Security Council adopted Resolution 825, calling on North Korea to
return to full compliance with international nonproliferation
obligations, and urging all member states to “facilitate” a solution
to the problem. Pursuant to that resolution, the United States held a
first round of talks with North Korea in New York in June 1993. On
June 11 – one day before Pyongyang’s withdrawal would have become
effective – a joint US-NK statement announced North Korea’s agreement
to “suspend” notice of its intention to withdraw from the NPT, but
leaving the underlying issues of North Korea’s full compliance with
its international nonproliferation commitments unresolved.
To address those
issues, in July the United States and North Korea held a second round
of talks in Geneva, but failed to reach agreement. North Korea
proposed to abandon its gas-graphite nuclear program – ideally suited
to nuclear weapons production – in exchange for assistance in building
more proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. To keep pressure
on North Korea, the United States conditioned a third round of
US-North Korean talks on Pyongyang’s engagement with South Korea and
with the IAEA.
Just before the Geneva
talks, President Clinton traveled to Seoul. In a July 10 speech to
the National Assembly there, the President reaffirmed the U.S.
security commitment to South Korea, calling the continued U.S.
military presence “the bedrock of America’s security role in the Asian
Pacific.” In the months that followed, the United States quietly
enhanced its military assets in South Korea, reviewed its war plans
for a conflict in Korea, engaged in military consultations with Japan,
and continued a robust program of joint military exercises with South
Korea.
By autumn of 1993,
Pyongyang’s continued failure to meet the conditions for a third round
of talks brought it close to breaking “the continuity of safeguards”,
a standard by which the IAEA could assure the international community
that no additional plutonium was being separated in North Korea.
Facing a deteriorating situation, in November the United States and
South Korea agreed to propose a “broad and thorough” approach to the
problem, in which the nuclear issue would be resolved in the context
of the overall political, military, diplomatic, and commercial
relations between North Korea and the international community.
The United States and
North Korea agreed that on a single day in March 1994--dubbed “Super
Tuesday” – four events would occur: the IAEA would inspect the
Yongbyon nuclear facilities, the North and South would meet to arrange
the exchange envoys, South Korea would announce the suspension of the
1994 Team Spirit exercise, and Washington and Pyongyang would
announced the scheduling of a third round of bilateral talks.
As “Super Tuesday”
approached, however, the agreement fell apart over continued
disagreements on the sequencing of the North-South talks, as well as
by North Korea’s refusal to allow the IAEA to carry out its full range
of inspection activities at Yongbyon. The coup de grace came
on March 19 when a North Korean official threatened to engulf Seoul in
a “sea of fire”. The United States, which had been quietly enhancing
its military presence in Korea for months, responded by completing
long-planned Patriot missile deployments to South Korea, and
intensifying diplomatic efforts – including through China – to apply
pressure on Pyongyang to return to full compliance with its
nonproliferation obligations.
Facing a unified
international community (reflected in UN resolutions and private
communications), unable to drive a wedge between the United States and
its regional allies, losing the support of its traditional sponsors in
Moscow and Beijing, by April 1994 North Korea had nowhere left to
turn. Choosing defiance over compliance, Pyongyang refused further
negotiations, quickly moving to cross one of the red lines the
Americans had drawn as a condition for continued U.S.-North Korean
dialogue: the removal of the 8,000 spent fuel rods from the 5 MW
reactor at Yongbyon without adequate international controls to
assure the IAEA of the preservation of historical information in the
rods that could help resolve the anomalies in North Korea’s May 1993
declaration to the IAEA.
In June of 1994, the
IAEA announced it could no longer confirm the continuity of safeguards
in North Korea. The United States responded by breaking off dialogue
with North Korea and beginning consultations at the UN on a Security
Council resolution imposing sanctions against North Korea. At the
same time, the Pentagon prepared a series of options for the President
to augment U.S. forces in Korea by up to 50,000 troops or more,
reinforced by additional deployments of air and sea power to the
region, in order to support the enforcement of sanctions and to deter
North Korea from taking any militarily hostile action across the
demilitarized zone.
Meanwhile, former
President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang – privately but with the
acquiescence of the White House – to attempt to defuse the crisis.
Emerging from talks with North Korea’s aging leader, Kim Il Sung,
Carter announced that North Korea was willing to “freeze” the program
and allow IAEA inspectors to remain at Yongbyon. He also disclosed
that Kim Il Sung was willing to hold a summit meeting with South
Korean President Kim Young Sam.
The White House,
unwilling to reward North Korea merely for halting a violation of an
existing commitment, used diplomatic channels to expand U.S.
demands, specifically by redefining a nuclear “freeze” in North Korea
to include the continued shutdown of the five-megawatt reactor that
had produced North Korea’s plutonium. North Korea accepted this U.S.
definition by committing to the expanded freeze. The logjam broken,
U.S. negotiators returned to Geneva in July to resume discussions with
the North Koreans. After one day of meetings, the stunning news of
Kim Il Sung’s death abruptly terminated the discussions, and each
delegation returned to its home capital.
In August 1994, the
United States resumed discussions with North Korea, and the outlines
of a deal quickly emerged. Subsequent negotiations concluded on
October 21, 1994, with the signing by Ambassador Robert Gallucci and
Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju of the Agreed Framework. Under the
Agreed Framework, North Korea affirmed its NPT member status,
committed to allow implementation of its IAEA safeguards agreement,
and froze the existing North Korean nuclear program under IAEA
supervision. Under the freeze, North Korea refrained from restarting
the five megawatt reactor and halted construction on two larger (50MW
and 200MW) reactors, which together could have produced 150 kilograms
of plutonium per year, enough for dozens of nuclear weapons. North
Korea accepted U.S. assistance in recanning the 8,000 spent fuel rods
in the storage facility at Yongbyon. The reactor, spent fuel storage,
and reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon were sealed and subjected to
continuous on-site monitoring by IAEA inspectors.
The Agreed Framework
also provided for the eventual dismantlement of the existing North
Korean nuclear program and export of spent nuclear fuel already in
North Korea.
The Agreed Framework
provided that in return for the freezing and dismantling of its
nuclear program, North Korea would receive assistance from the
international community in the form of two 1,000 MW light water
reactors and, in the interim, 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil per year
as an offset to the energy that would have been generated by the North
Korean nuclear reactors that were frozen under the agreement. North
Korea agreed to accept whatever inspections or other steps deemed
necessary by the IAEA to return to full compliance with its IAEA
obligations before Pyongyang received any significant nuclear
components for the light-water reactor project.
The United States,
South Korea, and Japan established the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization (KEDO) to implement the Agreed Framework.
The KEDO charter members agreed that South Korea would provide the
lion’s share of the $4 billion estimated cost of the light-water
reactor project, Japan would provide a significant share of the
balance, and the United States would bear primary responsibility and
pay for arranging the heavy fuel oil shipments (costing $50 million
per year, on average, depending on oil prices). The European Union
subsequently joined KEDO and provided some financial support for the
Agreed Framework, as did a number of other governments. Early on,
when questions were raised about the possible diversion of heavy fuel
oil from its intended use, the United States insisted on the
installation of monitoring devices in North Korea to safeguard against
diversion.
In the years that
followed the negotiation of the Agreed Framework, KEDO and North Korea
signed a light-water reactor supply agreement (December 1995), under
which site preparation work proceeded at Kumho in North Korea. At
times implementation of the Agreed Framework project was delayed by
budgetary and other difficulties and, in recent years, Pyongyang’s
continued failure to come into full compliance with its IAEA safeguard
obligations appeared to threaten the project. (Recall that the Agreed
Framework required that such compliance be fulfilled prior to the
delivery of significant nuclear components to the LWR project.)
The Agreed Framework
did not end tensions on the Peninsula. In 1996, interception of a
North Korean submarine infiltrating the waters off South Korea delayed
the ground-breaking at the Kumho light-water reactor site. In 1998,
continued concerns about North Korean proliferation-related activities
– including a ballistic missile firing over Japan and suspicions that
an underground facility discovered in the North might be used for
nuclear purposes – also threatened to derail the Agreed Framework.
U.S. diplomatic efforts to constrain North Korean proliferation
activities – including a policy review led by Secretary of Defense
Bill Perry and visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright – continued through the year 2000.
In 2001, the incoming
Bush Administration undertook a review of U.S. policy toward Korea,
which led to a decision to present a “bold initiative” to the North,
which would reach beyond the nuclear issue to address ballistic
missile and conventional military threats as well as such U.S.
concerns as human rights in North Korea. Over the summer of 2002,
however, evidence accumulated concerning a clandestine uranium
enrichment program. In October, Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asia James Kelly challenged Pyongyang on the basis of that evidence.
To the surprise of many, the North conceded the existence the
enrichment program, which violated North Korea’s international
nonproliferation commitments. KEDO responded by suspending the
shipment of heavy-fuel oil provided for under the Agreed Framework.
Pyongyang, in turn, abandoned a number of constraints that had been
implemented under the Agreed Framework – expelling International
Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, withdrawing from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, unsealing the Yongbyon nuclear facilities,
turning off the surveillance cameras and restarting the five-megawatt
reactor there – drastically reducing the controls over and
transparency into its nuclear program, while increasing its dangers.
The next major step North Korea could take on the nuclear side would
be to restart its reprocessing facility, which could separate five to
six bombs’ worth of plutonium from the 8,000 spent fuel rods over the
next several months. With intensifying rhetoric and a series of
escalating steps – including renewed missile testing by North Korea
and the interception of a U.S. surveillance aircraft over
international waters bordering Korea – the future course of events in
the Korean peninsula may be as dangerous as they are uncertain.
Principal
Author:
Daniel Poneman
is a Senior Fellow at The Forum for
International Policy. Mr. Poneman served on the National Security
Council Staff for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.
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