North Korea: The Leader of the Pack

For 50 years, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been the poster child for rogue states. It has pursued a nuclear weapons program, constructed and exported ballistic missiles, sponsored terrorist acts, allegedly participated in the drug trade and counterfeiting, and posed a continual threat to U.S. allies and interests, resulting in U.S. forces being stationed in South Korea and Japan. It has also been the subject of a policy experiment. Washington has been trying to engage Pyongyang to improve relations and end North Korea's bad behavior. This policy dates back to the Reagan administration, was continued by the Bush administration, and was accelerated by the Clinton administration. According to Gaston Sigur, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the Reagan administration, "we came to the conclusion that if you're really going to achieve some sort of semblance of peace on the Korean Peninsula, the only way to do that is to take steps to try to open the place." ¹

Engagement has been politically controversial, particularly during the Clinton administration. It is probably here to stay regardless because political trends in Northeast Asia, especially the ongoing rapprochement between South and North Korea, only reinforce the logic. The key question for the new administration is how to shape its engagement policy toward North Korea to further U.S. interests in a region that may be transitioning to some as yet unknown destination from the Cold War confrontation of the past five decades.

The Historical Record of Success

Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued engagement of North Korea since President Ronald Reagan's "modest initiative" in 1988. That plan allowed unofficial nongovernmental visits by North Koreans to the United States. It eased stringent financial regulations that impeded travel to North Korea by U.S. citizens. It granted permission for the limited commercial export of U.S. humanitarian goods to Pyongyang and for U.S. diplomats to engage in substantive discussion with North Koreans in neutral settings. The Bush administration's policy review regarding North Korea concluded that the United States should pursue what State Department officials called a strategy of "comprehensive engagement," namely, a gradual move toward normalized relations after North Korea met its international obligations not to build nuclear weapons. ² Shipments of wheat and corn stipulated by the modest initiative started, and the first-ever senior level meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials occurred in 1992.

The Clinton administration built on this approach but was confronted by three new challenges. First, in spite of the Bush administration's efforts, North Korea was about to build a substantial nuclear weapons stockpile that, if left unchecked, might have been able to produce more than 150 kilograms of plutonium annually, or about 10-20 weapons a year by the end of the decade. ³ Second, by 1995, Pyongyang seemed to be teetering on the verge of collapse--the result of a declining economy, a worsening food crisis, and a slow-motion leadership succession after Kim Il Song died in 1994--that could have destabilized the region. Third, North Korea's long-range missile test of August 1998 presented a possible threat to the continental United States, making it the first hostile country able to do so since the People's Republic of China began deploying long-range missiles in the early 1980s.

The administration's response was to intensify engagement. In 1994, the United States and North Korea concluded the Agreed Framework. It required the North to freeze and eventually dismantle key elements of its nuclear weapons program in return for a proliferation-resistant light-water reactor project and annual fuel-oil deliveries, funded by the United States, South Korea, and Japan with the assistance of other countries. The agreement was also a roadmap for improvement of U.S.-North Korean political and economic relations. From 1995 to 1999, the focus of U.S. efforts was largely the provision of...