North Korea nuke timeline: the Clinton years

A summation of a timeline from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, plus details from other sources. Note the repeated failure of diplomacy - meaning appeasement - to achieve adequate concrete results during the Clinton years. At best, it delayed the Hermit Kingdon's acquisition of nuclear weaponry by a few years, and even that much presumes you take a lot on faith. Is this Clinton's fault? Only in the sense that he was enough of a dilettante to trust in mere diplomacy in the first place.

Note also the repeated United Nations resolutions, and their singular lack of effect. Saddam Hussein was not the first to treat the UN's express will with utter contempt.

February, 1993: North Korean regime denies IAEA access to several suspected nuclear weapons sites.
North Korea stonewalls and blusters while evidence accumulates that they are developing nuclear weapons.

March through September, 1993 IAEA repeatedly threatens to bring the issue before the UN Security Council. Statements by Communist China undermine this threat.

July, 1993: Bill Clinton, to soothe South Korean fears, asserts that American ground troops and the US Navy will serve to deter North Korea from any attack on South Korea.

October, 1993: IAEA General Assembly passes a resolution against North Korea. Secret negotioations begin between North Korean regime and the United States government. Team Spirit milatiry maneuvers with US and South Korean forces used as a threat/bargaining chip.

November, 1993: United Nations General Assembly passes resolution against North Korea.

December, 1993: North Korea agrees to allow partial access to its declared nuclear facilities, and may not check IAEA seals. Bill Clinton declares this inadequate. North Korea then offers an expansion of inspections in exchange for a further round of talks. US and South Korea accept this.

January, 1994: Agreement is reached that North Korea will allow access to declared sites in exchange for cancellation of Team Spirit.

February, 1994: Norh Korean negotiators renege on unconditional inspections. Intelligence sources declare that the Yongbyon reactor is intended purely for plutonium separation. Eurochemic and Russia implicated in furnishing the technology.

March, 1994: IAEA detemines that Yongbyon will be online by end of year. Inspectors are shut out of sections of reactor.

April, 1994: north Korean regime calls for direct talks with United States. Hans Blix insists on access to two undeclared sites. North Korea refuses.

May, 1994: North Korea begins removing spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon reactor, thus destroying evidence. United States threatens to seek a UN Security Council resolution.

June, 1994: Hans Blix explains to the Security Council that there is no way of knowing whether the removed plutonium is being used to create nuclear weapons, the evidence having been irretrievably lost. IAEA suspends techincal aid to North Korea. North Korea relinquishes IAEA membership. Kim-Il-Sung promises Jimmy Carter he will allows some inspections and cameras at Yongbyon, that the FUEL RODS will not be reprocessed, and that the reactor will not be refueled. (Jimmy Carter had publicly voiced his opposition to any sanctions against North Korea.) Bill Clinton calls for sanctions, while John McCain and other Republicans take him to task for having done too little to prevent the situation.

July, 1994: Kim Il-Sung dies, and rule of the country passes to his son, Kim Jong-Il.

October, 1994: United States and North Korea arrive at Agreed Framework, by which the United States gives North Korea many concessions, including two light water reactors, fuel oil, and other economic assistance, in exchange for North Korea honoring past agreements with the IAEA. This seems to include the IAEA verifying the fate of the spent FUEL RODS.

November, 1994: United Nations approves the Agreed Framework. With a small team of inspectors, IAEA confirms that North Korea has halted operations at Yongbyon and at Taechon.

January, 1995: In defense of the agreement against critics in Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Defense Secretary William Perry asserts that North Korea had been five months away from a nuclear weapon, and that this deal would prevetn the spent FUEL RODS from being used to that end.

March, 1995: IAEA asks to be permitted to inspect the spent plutonium FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

Spetember, 1995: IAEA sends a team of inspectors to North Korea. IAEA General Conference calls on North Korea to cooperate and preserve intact all evidence. Hans Blix speaks of unresolved concerns, mostly about the spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

October, 1995: North Korea denies IAEA permission to inspect the FUEL RODS.

November, 1995: UN General Assembly passes another resolution.

January, 1996: North Korean regime says it agrees to cooperate with inspectors.

March, 1996: Hans Blix reports that North Korea is not cooperating with inspectors.

May, 1996: David Kyd reports that North Korea still isn't cooperating with inspectors with regard to the spent FUEL RODS from Yongbyon.

August, 1996: IAEA safeguards report states they can't verify what happened to the FUEL RODS.

September, 1996: Hans Blix says that the IAEA is still unable to verify. North Korea openly refuses to give the IAEA "any information whatsoever."

March, 1997: Hans Blix declares that talks have stalled.

June, 1997: IAEA says it is still unable to verify, etc.

March, 1998: North Korea reiterates its refusal to cooprate with inspectors.

April, 1998: North Korea unseals the Yongbyon reactor for "maintenance purposes.:

May, 1998 : US and South Korea state that the IAEA has confirmed that the seals remain in place at Yongbyon.
July, 1998: US GAO report says that North Korea has not allowed the IAEA to install monitoring equipment.

August, 1998: North Korea launches Taepo Dong 1 missile into Japanese air space.

September, 1998: North Korea pledges to resume packing its spent FUEL RODS rods properly, after CIA reported it was hiding them in unsuitable containers. US government sources say that North Korea is complying.

November, 1998: IAEA calls on North Korea to re-open nuclear sites for inspection.

December, 1998: North Korea denies access to suspected underground nuclear reactor at Kumchang-ni. Bil lclinton offers North Korea more food aid. This food aid reportedly is diverted to the North Korean Army.

March, 1999: IAEA officials report that critical parts of the Yongbyon reactor have been missing since 1994. (What was that about all seals being in place?)

(Note: Many estimate that North Korea has had a nuclear weapon since about this time frame. Remember those FUEL RODS?)

June 2000: Two Koreas summit. North and South agree to rebuild railroads in DMZ. United States easessanctions against North Korea.



References:

Monterey Institute: IAEA-North Korea: Nuclear Safeguards and Inspections

World Affairs: Clinton, Korea, and Presidential Diplomacy


Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/korea.html#20050515

Making the right enemies

Victor Davis Hanson takes a close look

Excerpts:

In short, who exactly does not like the United States and why? First, almost all the 20 or so illiberal Arab governments that used to count on American realpolitik's giving them a pass on accounting for their crimes. They fear not the realist Europeans, nor the resource-mad Chinese, nor the old brutal Russians, but the Americans, who alone are prodding them to open their economies and democratize their corrupt political cultures. We must learn to expect, not lament, their hostility, and begin to worry that things would be indeed wrong if such unelected dictators praised the United States.

The United Nations has sadly become a creepy organization. Its General Assembly is full of cutthroat regimes. The Human Rights Commission has had members like Vietnam and Sudan, regimes that at recess must fight over bragging rights to which of the two killed more of their own people. The U.N. has a singular propensity to find flawed men to be secretary-general - a Kurt Waldheim, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or Kofi Annan. Blue-helmeted peace-keepers, we learn, are as likely to commit as prevent crimes; and the only thing constant about such troops is that they will never go first into harm's way in Serbia, Kosovo, the Congo, or Dafur to stop genocide. Even worse, the U.N. has proved to be a terrible bully, an unforgivable sin for a self-proclaimed protector of the weak and innocent - loud false charges against Israel for its presence in the West Bank, not a peep about China in Tibet; tough talk about Palestinian rights, far less about offending Arabs over Darfur. So U.N. anti-Americanism is a glowing radiation badge, proof of exposure to toxicity.

The EU is well past being merely silly, as its vast complex of bureaucrats tries to control what 400 million speak, eat, and think. Its biggest concerns are three: figuring out how its nations are to keep paying billions of euros to retirees, unemployed, and assorted other entitlement recipients; how to continue to ankle-bite the United States without antagonizing it to the degree that these utopians might have to pay for their own security; and how not to depopulate itself out of existence. Europeans sold Saddam terrible arms for oil well after the first Gulf War. Democratic Israel or Taiwan means nothing to them; indeed, democracy is increasingly becoming the barometer by which to judge European hostility. Cuba, China, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah - not all that bad; the United States, Taiwan, and Israel, not all that good. Personally, I'd rather live in a country that goes into an anguished national debate over pulling the plug on a lone woman than one that blissfully vacations on the beach oblivious to 15,000 elderly cooked to well done back in Paris.

Mexico, enjoying one of the richest landscapes in the world, can't feed its own people, so it exports its poorest to the United States. Its own borders with Central America are as brutal to cross as our own are porous. Illegal aliens send back almost $50 billion, which has the effect of propping up corrupt institutions that as a result will never change. Given its treatment of its own people, if the Mexican government praised the United States we should indeed be concerned.

America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet - the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India - would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England.

Think about it. When Europe orders all American troops out; when Japan claims our textbooks whitewash the Japanese forced internment or Hiroshima; when China cites unfair trade with the United States; when South Korea says get the hell off our DMZ; when India complains that we are dumping outsourced jobs on them; when Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians refuse cash aid; when Canada complains that we are not carrying our weight in collective North American defense; when the United Nations moves to Damascus; when the Arab Street seethes that we are pushing theocrats and autocrats down its throat; when Mexico builds a fence to keep us out; when Latin America proclaims a boycott of the culturally imperialistic Major Leagues; and when the world ignores American books, films, and popular culture, then perhaps we should be worried. But something tells me none of that is going to happen in this lifetime.

I say:

When the feckless, the cowardly and the evil all hate you, you must be doing something right.


Angelfire link (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

Freenet: /SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0PAgM/marlowe/politics.world.html#20050501