THE KOREAN NUCLEAR ISSUE: Past, present and future – A Chinese perspective (Part Three)
It is perhaps still hard for most people to appreciate how profound the North Koreans’ sense of crisis was at that moment. It looks as though the events of the early 1990s deeply upset North Korea and led to its decision to go its own way, and by making the “nuclear choice” as far as its security was concerned. Following the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the USSR/Russia and China decided to improve and develop their relationships with South Korea. In sharp contrast, the US, as one of the direct parties to the armistice, took no visible steps to improve relations with North Korea, nor did its ally, Japan. The opportunity for cross recognition and simultaneous establishment of diplomatic relations was missed.
Around 1990, the US discovered, through satellite imagery, that North Korea was secretly developing nuclear weapons. The IAEA decided to carry out inspections as required by the NPT. From May 1992 to February 1993, North Korea received six unscheduled inspections by the IAEA but disagreed on the objectives and results of the inspections. In March of the same year, the US and South Korea resumed their joint military exercises, dubbed “Team Spirit,” while the IAEA proposed a “special inspection” of North Korea.
Regarding these as a doubling down of pressure, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT, triggering the first Korean nuclear crisis. The IAEA submitted a report on the Korean nuclear issue to the UN Security Council that April, and North Korea disregarded UN involvement, stating that it was essentially a problem that could only be settled with the US.
After President Bill Clinton came into office in 1993 and the age of confrontation between the US and Soviet camps ended, the US regarded the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction as its most realistic and direct security threat. In this context, resolving the Korean nuclear issue became the Clinton administration’s primary concern in Asia and the US started to re-examine the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
For some time, the prevailing approach of the US was to exert pressure and take a hard stand on North Korea. The US Senate adopted a resolution on June 16, 1994, to urge President Clinton toward taking action and getting the US Army ready not only for “deterrence,” but also for “repelling an attack from North Korea when necessary.” However, after evaluation, the US realized that military action would trigger North Korean attacks on South Korea, which would cause heavy civilian casualties. At this time, former US President Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang. He met with President Kim Il-sung and confirmed that North Korea was willing to negotiate with the US on the nuclear issue. This development prompted the Clinton administration to change its attitude and reverse its approach in favor of negotiation.
From June 1993, North Korea and the US conducted three rounds of highlevel talks in New York and Geneva, which culminated with the two parties finally signing the US-DPRK Agreed Framework. Its main contents included North Korea’s agreement to give up its two graphite-moderated nuclear reactors that were under construction. The US agreed to lead an international consortium to oversee and finance the construction of two 1,000-megawatt light water reactors with a total value of $4 billion, and to compensate the DPRK for the energy foregone due to the freeze of the graphite-moderated reactors by providing 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually. The whole course of negotiations mentioned above was held directly between North Korea and the US.
After the signing of the US-DPRK Agreed Framework, the situation on the Korean Peninsula calmed down. However, the implementation of the agreement was very slow. The US did take the lead in establishing the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), and some funds were raised internationally to transport heavy fuel oil to North Korea to help overcome the North Korean energy shortage. Over 8,000 spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor were removed and sealed up. But both the planned dismantling of the reactors and the construction of the light water reactors by the US, Japan and South Korea were consistently delayed, and ultimately never carried out.
It can be concluded that, in his first term, President Clinton managed the first North Korean nuclear crisis quite successfully. During his second term, he attempted to thoroughly resolve the nuclear issue by engaging more closely with North Korea. In October 1999, the US released an official report titled Review of US Policy Toward North Korea:
Findings and Recommendations, which mentioned that it was necessary to “adopt a comprehensive and integrated approach in dealing with the DPRK’s nuclear weapons- and ballistic missilerelated programs,” by relying on bilateral talks as essential means, supplemented by trilateral coordination with Japan and South Korea. However, neither party demonstrated sufficient political will or the ability to execute what was committed, with most of the content in the Agreed Framework left hanging in the air.
Toward the end of the Clinton administration, the door to normalizing relations between the US and North Korea was once again opened slightly. On Oct. 9, 2000, Kim Jong-il’s second-incommand, Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok, visited Washington as a special envoy. And on October 23, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright started a historic two-day visit to Pyongyang, where she was met by Kim Jong-il himself. She forwarded to the North Korean leaders President Clinton’s suggestions about how to improve US-DPRK relations and discussed with the North Korean side the nuclear and missile issue as well as the possibility of removing North Korea from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. The discussions also touched on setting up liaison offices and then lifting the offices to the level of diplomatic representatives at a later stage. The two sides had so much agreement that they even discussed the possibility of President Clinton visiting North Korea. After Secretary Albright returned home, the US planned for a visit by President Clinton to North Korea and a possible return visit by Kim Jong-il. However, as the US was already entering presidential elections, the lame duck Clinton administration had no time to realize this vision. In her memoir, Secretary Albright wrote that on the day before she left the White House, President Clinton told her that he wished he had taken up the chance to go to North Korea instead of staying in Washington to make a final push toward a peace agreement in the Middle East.
Several years later, I discussed this with Secretary Albright, and we agreed that perhaps an important opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue had unfortunately been missed. The Clinton administration had hoped that the new administration could move along with the new situation it had pioneered. However, the 2000 presidential election was won by Republican George W. Bush, who was surrounded by neoconservatives. He had been critical of the US-DPRK Agreed Framework even during his campaign. Moreover, he denounced the policy of engaging North Korea as having helped the regime avoid collapse. American rhetoric about North Korea often confuses “denuclearization” with “regime collapse,” so much so that North Korea could not tell which one was the main target. All of these changes in the US were quite hard for Pyongyang to comprehend. As a result, it could only conclude that the US was not serious about making an agreement in the first place.
The new US administration reexamined its policy toward North Korea, and the Clinton administration’s decision to increase contact was reversed. Eight months later, on Sept. 11, 2001, major terrorist attacks occurred, and soon the US government declared its war on terrorism. It is worth mentioning that after the 9/11 attacks, the spokesperson of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a statement that the 9/11 attacks were a “very regretful and tragic incident,” stressing that “as a UN member state, North Korea is opposed to all forms of terrorism… and this stance will remain unchanged.” This gesture by North Korea toward the US was completely different from its past hardline posture, but the gesture was ignored by the Bush administration. In his State of the Union address in January 2002, the US president listed North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, as one of the three states forming the “axis of evil.”