The Korean Nuclear Issue

In October 2002 the United States confronted North Korea with suspicions that Pyongyang was enriching uranium in violation of the Agreed Framework that the nations had worked out during the Clinton administration. North Korea subsequently evicted international monitors and resumed its nuclear weapons program. The Peninsula Question chronicles the resulting second Korean nuclear crisis. Japanese journalist Yoichi Funabashi, informed by interviews with more than 160 diplomats and decision makers from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the negotiations to denuclearize the peninsula. Between 2002 and 2006, a series of top level diplomats, including the prime minister of Japan, attempted to engage with North Korea. Funabashi illustrates how the individual efforts of these major powers laid the groundwork for multilateral negotiations, first as the trilateral meeting and then as the Six-Party Talks. The first four rounds of talks (2003–2005) resulted in significant progress. Unfortunately, a lack of implementation after that breakthrough ultimately led to North Korea's missile tests in July and subsequent nuclear tests in October 2006. Th e Peninsula Question provides a window of understanding on the historical, geopolitical, and security concerns at play on the Korean peninsula since 2002. Offering multiple perspectives on the second Korean nuclear crisis, it describes more than just the U.S. and North Korean points of view. It pays special attention to China's dealings with North Korea, providing rare insights to into the decision-making processes of Beijing. This is an important, authoritative resource for understanding the crisis in Korea and diplomacy in Northeast Asia.

This study makes northeast Asia the focus of analysis on how the nuclear crisis in 2002-2006 affected strategic thinking. While all those in the Six-Party Talks are included, the author explores in particular debates about the standoff in four countries on the front lines (South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia).

A decade before being proclaimed part of the "axis of evil," North Korea raised alarms in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo as the pace of its clandestine nuclear weapons program mounted. When confronted by evidence of its deception in 1993, Pyongyang abruptly announced its intention to become the first nation ever to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, defying its earlier commitments to submit its nuclear activities to full international inspections. U.S. intelligence had revealed evidence of a robust plutonium production program. Unconstrained, North Korea's nuclear factory would soon be capable of building about thirty Nagasaki-sized nuclear weapons annually. The resulting arsenal would directly threaten the security of the United States and its allies, while tempting cash-starved North Korea to export its deadly wares to America's most bitter adversaries. In Go ing Critical, three former U.S. officials who played key roles in the nuclear crisis trace the intense efforts that led North Korea to freeze—and pledge ultimately to dismantle—its dangerous plutonium production program under international inspection, while the storm clouds of a second Korean War gathered. Drawing on international government documents, memoranda, cables, and notes, the authors chronicle the complex web of diplomacy--from Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing to Geneva, Moscow, and Vienna and back again—that led to the negotiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework intended to resolve this nuclear standoff. They also explore the challenge of weaving together the military, economic, and diplomatic instruments employed to persuade North Korea to accept significant constraints on its nuclear activities, while deterring rather than provoking a violent North Korean response. Some ten years after these intense negotiations, the Agreed Framework lies abandoned. North Korea claims to possess some nuclear weapons, while threatening to produce even more. The story of the 1994 confrontation provides important lessons for the United States as it grapples once again with a nuclear crisis on a peninsula that half a century ago claimed more than 50,000 American lives and today bristles with arms along the last frontier of the cold war: the De-Militarized Zone separating North and South Korea.

Jina Kim investigates how North Korea rationalized its pursuit of nuclear weapons programs for more than two decades, by exploring the dialectical development of the nuclear crisis and the obstacles generated by complex internal Korean dynamics and conflicting interests amongst the major players concerned.

"In describing their comprehensive proposal for negotiations with North Korea, O'Hanlon and Mochizuki exhibit the strategic creativity and analytical depth badly needed by United States policy makers dealing with this strange, dangerous place." --Ash Carter, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University IN EARLY 2002, in his fateful state of the union address, President Bush described North Korea as being a member of the "Axis of Evil." Since then, the U.S. has gone to war with Iraq, and the world now wonders what the future of Bush's preemption policy will bring. Many of the nation's top experts feel that North Korea is a more imminent threat than Saddam's Iraq was. They have a nuclear program, a million-man army, and missiles to deploy and export. In Crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Michael O'Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at Brooking and visiting lecturer at Princeton, and Mike Mochizuki, endowed chair in Japan-US Relations at G.W. University, not only examine this issue in detail but also offer a comprehensive blueprint for diffusing the crisis with North Korea. Their solution comes in the form of a "grand bargain" with North Korea. Accords could be negotiated step-by-step, however they need to be guided by a broad and ambitious vision that addresses not only the nuclear issue but also the conventional forces on the hyper-militarized peninsula and the ongoing decline of the North Korean economy.

This work provides an analysis of North Korea's nuclear controversy from a variety of perspectives, including: nuclear reactor technology and technology transfer; economic sanctions and incentives; confidence-building measures; environmental challenges; and the views of Korea and the major powers.

Drawing on previously unpublished Russian archival materials, this book is the first detailed history and current analysis of the North Korean nuclear program. The contributors discuss Soviet-North Korean nuclear relations, economic and military aspects of the nuclear program, the nuclear energy sector, North Korea's negotiations with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, cooperative security, and U.S. policy. Unique in its focus on North Korean attitudes and perspectives, The North Korean Nuclear Program also includes Russian interviews with North Korean officials.