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One: North Korea
- University of Washington Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 O N E North Korea T he Roots of the noRth KoRean nucleaR PRoblem stRetch deep into history. In 1964, North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, who was installed by the Soviets after World War II and later triggered the Korean War when he launched an attack on South Korea, journeyed to China seeking nuclear weapons technology. North Korea had signed nuclear cooperation agreements with the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1959 and with China in 1959. Kim’s military had been humbled by United Nations’ forces led by the United States, and an uneasy truce had succeeded the Korean War in the region of the thirty-eighth parallel, near the original border between North and South. These cease-fire arrangements, referred to as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), are still in place some fiftyeight years after the cessation of hostilities. When China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964, it became a brandnew member of the nuclear club, which at the time included four other countries (France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States). China was not interested in becoming a nuclear weapon proliferator and politely declined Kim’s request. Muammar Qaddafi also tried to obtain nuclear technology from China in 1970, and Kim Il Sung made his request again in 1974, at a time when South Korea was exploring a nuclear option. China’s response to both requests was again in the negative. Therefore , in the late 1970s, Kim ordered government officials to begin seeking nuclear weapons on their own. The Soviet Union had sold a small research reactor, capable of little beyond laboratory work, to North Korea in the 4 ChAPTeR oNe 1960s. The reactor was built at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang; the Soviets also established a research center there. In the early 1980s, North Korea began building a larger research reactor at Yongbyon in the range of five megawatts (electric) or twenty to thirty megawatts (thermal). That reactor, which became operational in 1986, produced heat, electricity, and plutonium . By the end of the decade, North Korea was mining uranium and building two larger reactors, fifty megawatts and two hundred megawatts (both electric). With so much nuclear activity under way, North Korea came under heavy pressure from the Soviet Union to sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It did so in 1986, the year its new five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon became operational. Initially, North Korea refused to negotiate a Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as required by the treaty, but after facing significant international pressure, it signed such an agreement in early 1992. Several months after IAEA inspectors, led by Director General Hans Blix, began their work in North Korea, they discovered that a facility North Korea had declared to the IAEA as a radioisotope laboratory (supposedly capable only of research) was in fact an undeclared reprocessing plant. Director General Blix subsequently made this public in a press conference in Beijing. Inspectors had also become suspicious of two undeclared waste storage sites. They asked to inspect them and were denied permission. U.S. intelligence later surmised that North Korea had shut down its five-megawatt reactor in 1989 for three months, long enough to withdraw fuel rods sufficient to reprocess plutonium for one to two weapons. Inspectors had analyzed nuclear waste samples indicating that the facility had reprocessed more than the ninety grams of the plutonium North Korea had admitted it had produced. In February 1993, the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna requested a “special inspection” of the two waste storage sites, which, it was believed, based on satellite imagery supplied by U.S. intelligence, could indicate that there had been undeclared plutonium production.1 The board had initially been divided over whether to make such a demand, but the satellite imagery persuaded those who were uncertain. The board gave Pyongyang thirty days to accede to its request—but did not need to wait nearly that long for the response. North Korea rejected the request the very next day and, about two weeks later, on March 12, gave the three-month notice required for withdrawal from the NPT. Further IAEA inspections of any kind were also [18.234.232.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:11 GMT) NoRTh KoReA 5 halted. This was a significant shock to the international community, as no state had ever before exercised the withdrawal provision of the NPT or that of any other international arms control or nonproliferation agreement. Near...