Stepwise Approaches to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Conundrum
Jungmin Kang 
While the U.S. remains preoccupied with Iraq, the crisis on the Korean peninsula continues to intensify. Confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK) has been being accelerated since the U.S. announcement of October 16, 2002, that North Korea had acknowledged a secret uranium enrichment program during U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly's visit to Pyongyang in early October 2002. If the present circumstances on the Korean peninsula keep escalating, the U.S. and North Korea might collide in the very near future.
Background
North Korea acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in December 1985 under pressure from the former Soviet Union. However, for more than six years North Korea delayed ratifying a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before finally doing so on January 30, 1992. The agreement called for the IAEA to inspect the North Korean nuclear facilities after ratification.
The IAEA began its ad hoc inspections in North Korea in late May 1992, following the North Korean provision of its initial nuclear inventory report on May 4, 1992. The IAEA discovered discrepancies in the North Korean declaration of nuclear materials, and in February 1993 invoked the right for "special inspections" to inspect two sites that North Korea had not declared and that the IAEA suspected of housing nuclear waste. However, North Korea refused on the grounds that those two sites were military installations, and announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT in March 1993. Tensions on the Korean peninsula increased, and the prospect of war hung over the peninsula in the spring of 1994.
Following three high-level negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea, the two countries on October 21, 1994, concluded the U.S.–DPRK Agreed Framework (hereafter referred to as the "Agreed Framework") to produce an overall settlement of the nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula and to calm the crisis on the Korean peninsula.
Agreed Framework
The Agreed Framework was eventually supposed to dismantle the North Korean nuclear facilities relevant to plutonium production and separation in return for the supply of two pressurized light-water reactors with a generating capacity of 1,000 MWe each (the so-called light-water reactor (LWR) project) and annual deliveries of 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) to North Korea until the PWRs became operational.
In addition, the Agreed Framework required that the U.S. and North Korea would "move toward full normalization of political and economical relations" including the following:
The U.S. would provide formal assurances to North Korea that it would not be threatened or attacked with U.S. nuclear weapons.
North Korea would cooperate with South Korea to implement the North–South Joint Declarationon the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
If the work had gone well, the concerns over the North Korean nuclear issue would be resolved and the LWR project would be almost completed at this point. However, the implementation of the Agreed Framework has been delayed for several years.
The U.S. had insisted that North Korea should already have allowed the IAEA to inspect its nuclear facilities. North Korea, however, had insisted that it would start talkson the inspections with the IAEA after a significant portion of the LWR project is completed. And North Korea had demanded compensation from the U.S. for the delay of the LWRs construction and the resulting loss of electricity supply. Since the Agreed Framework does not clarify when North Korea should start that process, the ambiguity about the timing of the IAEA's inspection to North Korea had been the source of controversy between the U.S. and North Korea.
Revisited Crisis
In November 2002, the U.S. cut off the supply of HFO that the U.S. had been providing to North Korea since 1994, accusing North Korea of having a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of the Agreed Framework. The HFO was alternative energy for heating and electricity generation to offset the energy foregone not completing the construction of 50 MWe and 200 MWe reactors.
Responding to this, North Korea expelled the IAEA inspectors in late December 2002 and announced its withdrawal from the NPT on January 10, 2003, once again. Furthermore, North Korea restarted the 5 MWe reactor in late February 2003 that it had shut down as a result of the Agreed Framework and as of early April 2003 has been preparing to restart its reprocessing facility. It could then separate enough plutonium from already-produced spent fuel for several Nagasaki-type bombs.
The U.S. responded by moving two dozen heavy bombers to Guam within range of North Korea. The U.S. announced that if North Korea begins plutonium separation, it would be making a serious mistake. The situation on the Korean peninsula continues to deteriorate.
Stepwise Approaches
North Korea has been demanding since late October 2002 that the U.S. agree to a bilateral non-aggression pact with North Korea, which goes beyond the commitments in the Agreed Framework, because of its great concerns that its security is threatened by a conceivable U.S. nuclear attack.
In January 2002, the U.S. put North Korea back on the U.S. nuclear target list in the context of the Nuclear Posture Review. This contravenes the U.S. commitment that it had made not to threaten non-nuclear-weapon states with nuclear weapons and violates the U.S. commitment under the Agreed Framework as well.
I suggest that the following steps should be taken by the U.S. and North Korea to defuse peacefully the current rising confrontation between the two countries:
First of all, both the U.S. and North Korea should immediately stop aggressive actions that suggest a willingness to take military action. They should also send diplomatic signals that, considering the urgency of the Korean crisis, they are ready for immediate dialog to avoid military confrontation between them. At the same time, the UN Security Council should issue a similar resolution to the one from 1993, and request North Korea to remain a party to the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state. This resolution would send the message that this is not just a U.S.-North Korea but also an international security issue.
Secondly, the U.S. and North Korea should clarify the secret North Korean uranium enrichment program that set off the current Korean crisis. The U.S. announced that North Korea acknowledged the existence of its clandestine uranium enrichment program when James Kelly visited Pyongyang last October. It is said that James Kelly simply told North Korean officials that the U.S. government had known that North Korea was violating the agreement by covertly enriching uranium and that if North Korea ever wanted to receive the benefits of normal relations and other aid, it would have to stop. Responding to this, it is said that North Korea insisted that it was entitled to have nuclear weapons to safeguard its security in the face of a growing U.S. threat. There is disagreement between their arguments.
Thirdly, at the same time, North Korea should suspend its nuclear activities, accept the return of IAEA inspectors immediately, and state its willingness to live up to all its obligations under the NPT and the Agreed Framework in return for the U.S. resumption of its HFO supply to North Korea until the first LWR is constructed. This is based on the prerequisite conditions that the U.S. should provide its official commitment not to attack North Korea as long as North Korea is trying to keep its efforts to reduce tension on the Korean peninsula. Official guarantees can be provided by China and Russia, considering their influence on the Korean peninsula.
Fourthly, both the U.S. and North Korea should agree to negotiate issues that were sources of controversy in the implementation of the Agreed Framework, such as the timing of special inspections of the IAEA in North Korea, removal from North Korea of the 8,000 plutonium-containing spent fuel rods stored in Yongbyon, dismantlement of all its graphite-moderated reactors and of its reprocessing facility, and moving toward full normalization of U.S.-North Korea political and economic relations to accomplish the nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
In the course of renegotiations in deescalating and defusing the current nuclear tension between the U.S. and North Korea, South Korea could contribute significantly by convincing North Korea to stop provoking the rest of the world and demanding the U.S. to talk with North Korea.
South Korea could take the following actions to convince North Korea:
Provision of electric power to North Korea in exchange for import of a significant portion of electricity to be generated from the two LWRs until North Korea's grid can accommodate the power reactors;
Join collaboration with North Korea in decommissioning and decontamination of the frozen nuclear facilities, with significant payment; and
Joint collaboration with North Korea in development of its energy infrastructure, including upgrading the electrical grid system, rehabilitating power plants, etc., along with other members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO).
