Key Issues for North Korea Policy
Missile Negotiations and the 1994 Agreed Framework
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung visited Washington today to discuss with President Bush several important issues affecting relations between the U.S. and South Korea. Among the top concerns were U.S. policies towards North Korea, including negotiations to end North Korea’s development and export of ballistic missiles and the status of the 1994 Agreed Framework suspending North Korea’s nascent nuclear program.
MISSILE NEGOTIATIONS
Last year the U.S. came close to reaching an agreement with North Korea that would have ended its development and export of ballistic missiles and related technologies. Potential proposals included launching North Korean satellites on foreign launchers or providing humanitarian aid packages in return for a cessation of North Korean missile activity. The U.S. rejected proposals that included giving North Korea space launch vehicle technology or direct cash payments.
Time ran out on the Clinton administration before an agreement could be finalized, and the Bush administration remained largely silent on the matter during its first month in office. Unsure whether the new administration’s reticence amounted to a new hard-line stance, North Korea issued a statement in February 2001 that it might end its moratorium on missile tests.
President Bush’s comments today marked a quick shift in rhetoric. He expressed skepticism about the North Korean regime and indicated that he was not ready to resume negotiations, while Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled the country a threat. Only yesterday Powell indicated that the U.S. would continue the work started by the Clinton administration. “We do plan to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off,” Powell said at a news conference. “Some promising elements were left on the table, and we’ll be examining those elements.”
1994 AGREED FRAMEWORK
Another agreement with North Korea-the 1994 Agreed Framework- stands at risk of collapse. Under the pact, North Korea pledged to dismantle a five-Megawatt nuclear power reactor and plutonium reprocessing facility at Yongbyon while the U.S., South Korea, and Japan agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear power reactors that would be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards. In addition, the U.S. promised to provide up to 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil per year to meet North Korea’s energy needs until the first reactor begins operation.
The framework has encountered several problems, causing construction of the reactors to fall several years behind schedule:
- North Korea has not provided a satisfactory history of its efforts to develop nuclear weapons-a prerequisite for construction to begin on the promised light water reactors. Neither has North Korea agreed to inspections of all of its nuclear facilities, another provision of the framework.
- General Electric, which was supposed to supply the turbines for the light-water reactors, withdrew because of questions surrounding legal liability for accidents.
- The price of heavy fuel oil has tripled over the past five years, causing the cost of U.S. contributions to soar above $100 million a year.
- North Korea is demanding pay raises for its workers at the reactor sites and is not cooperating in training technicians to work at the site.
- North Korea’s power grid cannot handle the output of the planned nuclear reactors.
Critics of the agreement worry that the reactor technology and radioactive byproducts will benefit North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and argue that the reactors-once fully operational-will produce enough plutonium to make 100 nuclear bombs each year. This argument is misleading. The reactors will produce approximately 500kg of reactor grade plutonium each year, but this plutonium will be mixed with highly radioactive spent fuel elements. If North Korea wants to build nuclear weapons, it must have the capability to reprocess the spent reactor fuel in order to separate out the plutonium. North Korea’s only reprocessing plant was shut down as part of the Agreed Framework and is now under IAEA monitoring. Building another one in secret would risk almost certain detection and could be accomplished only at considerable cost and in violation of international agreement.
Even if North Korea could clandestinely separate plutonium from spent fuel, reactor-grade plutonium is less suitable for weapons development than weapons-grade plutonium, the type that would have been produced by North Korea’s Yongbyon reactors had the Agreed Framework not shut them down.
Rumors are now floating that the U.S. might consider revising the agreement so that North Korea will receive conventional power facilities instead of the two nuclear reactors. However, during his confirmation hearing, Secretary Powell insisted that “We will abide by and agree to the commitments made under the Agreed Framework, provided that North Korea does the same.” Last week State Department spokesman Richard Boucher reiterated that the Bush administration would abide by the framework provisions “completely and fully.”
South Korea’s Kim, eager to protect his country’s security and to continue his “sunshine policy” of engagement with the North, also wants the U.S. to honor the Agreed Framework’s original provisions as well as to continue negotiations toward a missile agreement. Altering or eliminating these agreements could rankle North Korea to the point that it might return to isolation and reconstitute its nuclear and missile programs. South Korea also has a financial stake in preserving the Agreed Framework, as South Korean businesses hold large contracts for work on the nuclear reactors.
The Bush administration must realize that a missile agreement with North Korea is not beyond reach and that the 1994 Agreed Framework is not beyond repair. If, as President Bush stated, North Korea does pose a threat to the U.S., then negotiations should be resumed as quickly as possible and not postponed. These agreements provide genuine opportunities to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and thus serve U.S. national security interests. President Bush and President Kim should focus not on whether these agreements should be pursued, but rather on how they can be realized.