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The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, 1992-2002 - A Diplomat’s Undiplomatic Critic, 2024

The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, 1992-2002 - A Diplomat’s Undiplomatic Critic By C. Kenneth Quinon... more The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, 1992-2002 -
A Diplomat’s Undiplomatic Critic
By
C. Kenneth Quinones
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024

Book in Focus

The Supreme Commander of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un, dressed in a white, gold braid decorated military uniform and flanked by stern faced generals with gleaming medals covering their chests, looks down on from a massive gray granite reviewing stand at a massive crowd of wildly cheering people assembled in Kim Il Sung Plaza, the center of Pyongyang. The parade begins. Soldiers with bayonet tipped assault rifles across their chests look up at their grinning leader as they goose step past the massive gray granite reviewing as a large military band performs martial music. An impressive array of shiny combat vehicles and tanks slowly roll past as Russian made fighter bombers roar overhead. A fearsome display of huge dull green ballistic missiles mounted on mobile rocket launchers follows.
The arsenal on display in Kim Il Sung Plaza, though fearsome, is not designed to project the image of an aggressive nation, but neither is it propaganda or a threat. Its primary aim is to reassure North Koreans their government can and will defend them from the “imperialists” lurking beyond the nation’s borders, particularly South Korea, the United States and Japan.
Most worrisome is the display of ballistic missile with the potential capacity to deliver nuclear warheads as far as North America and Europe. How could one of the world’s smallest and poorest nations join the world’s exclusive group of nations armed with nuclear weapons? The DPRK, which occupies the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, is about the same size as Cuba or the state of Pennsylvania. It is one of the world’s poorest nations, ranking about 182 among 226 nations according to the best international estimates. Yet it is one of only nine nations known possessing a nuclear arsenal. It’s nuclear arsenal is believed to have enough plutonium to make 45 to 55 nuclear weapons and to already possess 20 to 30 nuclear warheads, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The DPRK also possesses an impressive progress arsenal of long range ballistic missiles believed capable of delivering a nuclear war head on a target in the United States. Whether DPRK scientists have developed nuclear warheads capable of re-entry into the atmosphere and of accurately hitting a selected target remains dubious, at least for the time being. Eventually, however, the DPRK’s persistent efforts will arm it with an accurate nuclear armed inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Thirty years ago, the DPRK appeared ready to transform itself from a despised, belligerent promoter of international terrorism into a respected member of the international community. Abruptly, this changed in the fall of 1992 when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tentatively determined the DPRK’s declaration of its previous plutonium production was inaccurate and repeatedly requested access to the nuclear waste at Nyongbyon Nuclear Research Center to collect samples needed to assess the accuracy of the DPRK’s initial declaration. Pyongyang responded with an adamant no, reversing the unprecedented progress the two Koreas had made between toward reconciliation between 1988 and 1992, raising expectation of Korea’s unification and the normalization of US-North Korea relations.
Alas, this did not happen. Pyongyang’s refusal to cooperate with the IAEA sparked what became the North Korea nuclear crisis of 1993-94. Instead, tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated to a global crisis when the North Korea declared in March 1993 its intention to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). President Clinton, urged on by South Korea and the international community, hesitantly agreed to negotiate with Pyongyang. The first ever US-North Korea diplomatic negotiations. When the negotiations deadlocked and war appeared inevitable, former President Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, opening the way for the negotiations to resume. Shortly after, the US-North Korean negotiations yielded the Agreed Framework on October 21, 1994, in Geneva, Switzerland.
This book explores North Korea’s rise as a member of the world’s nuclear club, particularly its motives and why the first US-DPRK diplomatic agreement “failed” to halt Pyongyang’s quest for a nuclear arsenal. The author was the Department of State North Korea Affairs Officer between August 1992 and 1994, a key member of the US team which negotiated the Agreed Framework and served as the US government liaison officer in North Korea between 1993 and 1997 during which he made more than thirty trips to the DPRK and lived a total of six months in Pyongyang and at the Nyongbyon Nuclear Research Center. He was the designated note taker during the nuclear negotiations, and he compiled a detailed record of the proceedings. He maintained daily diaries during his extended stays in North Korea while accompanying members of Congress, working as the US official liaison officer in North Korea, and facilitating the US Army’s Central Identification Laboratory’s search for the remains of Korean War US military remains in North Korea. His many meetings with North Korea officials included: “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam, DPRK First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and chief negotiator Kang Sok Ju, numerous diplomats, civilian officials, generals and private citizens.
The narrative and assessment of the nuclear crisis, the negotiations to resolve it and the implementation of the Agreed Framework draw heavily on the author’s extensive unpublished transcripts of the negotiations, twenty-eight diaries containing notes of private conversations with officials at all levels of North Korean civilian and military officials, and ordinary citizens, and previously unpublished official North Korean statements.

Official DPRK statements, including those by the chief DPRK negotiator, appear verbatim in the narrative. The author extensive notes and diaries afford otherwise impossible insight into Pyongyang’s policies, the dynamics of its policy making process and the bureaucratic rivalries within the government. Also closely scrutinized are the policies of the United States, South and North Korea, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The author’s contemporary views, information from US and DPRK government documents and other published studies are merged into a broad based assessment of the negotiations and the Agreed Framework’s implementation. The conclusion certainly is not definitive, but arguably it is a significant step in that direction.
The effort ultimately proved futile. On December 12, 2002, the DPRK effectuated its withdrawal from the NPT, something it had agreed to suspend in June 1993. On December 22, the DPRK began dismantling the IAEA’s monitoring equipment and reprocessing its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to extract plutonium from them to fabricate a nuclear bomb, rendering the Agreed Framework a “dead document.”
Why had this happened? Conventional wisdom asserts the Agreed Framework failed, suggesting the agreement was doomed to fail because of its intrinsic shortcomings. Others engaged in finger pointing, pitting advocates of the agreement against its critics with one side blaming the other of either having been excessively generous with the DPRK or having impeded the agreement’s implementation.
The purpose here is to improve our understanding why the Agreed Framework fell short of its goals by reviewing the negotiations and the Agreed Framework’s implementation. A small library of studies has already documented the negotiations either from the perspective of senior US policy makers or outside observers. Here the perspective is that of a middled ranked diplomat responsible for forging ties between the US and DPRK governments and facilitating bilateral communication. The author was the first US diplomat to visit the DPRK, and the first to meet DPRK leader Kim Il Sung, and several other ranking DPRK officials. Initially, he was the only US official authorized to communicate with DPRK officials without obtaining prior permission. During more than thirty extended stays in the DPRK between 1992 and 2002, he accompanied Congressional delegations and conducted liaison between the two governments including between the US and Korean People’s Armies. His responsibilities required working closely with a broad spectrum of North Koreans including diplomats, military officers, nuclear scientists and technicians, hotel staff, drivers, etc.

A note of appreciation is in order. My wife and daughters endured long periods not knowing whether I was healthy or would even be able to return home. They knew foreigners occasionally endured severe harassment, even imprisonment in the DPRK, and about exposure to radiation at Nyongbyon Nuclear Research Center, the risk of becoming seriously ill and being in a traffic accident without quick access to proper medical care. My wife had asked me not to call or write to her while I was in the DPRK. She was certain our communications would be monitored, and something might be said which could be used against me. I was instead to spend the cost of telephone calls and faxes on an equivalent sum in Japan to purchase Japanese dishes.
Only once was I threatened with being denied permission to depart the DPRK. After so many visits, officials of the Ministry of Internal Security summoned me before a very rude character seated behind an elevated podium. Looking down at me, he accused me of being a spy. Looking up at him, I asserted his allegation was groundless. He became enraged and declared he would have me imprisoned. Fortunately, I was not alone. A Korean People’s Army lieutenant colonel had accompanied me. We had worked together during the US Army-KPA Joint Rec...