Nuke ambition is years in the making
Some observers are scratching their heads about how the North could benefit from the rocket launch. To others, it is not an unusual move, given the North’s history of continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction between intermittent respites they use to get aid from the international community.
After the collapse of the communist blocs in the 1990s, North Korea embarked on nuclear development for the survival of the regime. The first nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula generated by the North’s threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1993 was contained via three-stage, Washington-Pyongyang high-level talks and the Agreed Framework in Geneva in October 1994, under which the North pledged to halt its nuclear program.
In return, the U.S. promised to replace the North’s old graphite-moderated reactors for light water reactors and the normalization of bilateral relations. To implement the pledges for the North, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was founded by South Korea, the U.S. and Japan in 1995. The goal of the organization was to build two 1 million-kilowatt light water reactors in the North and provide heavy fuel oil as an alternative energy source. About $1.5 billion was spent over the next decade or so, with the majority of the cost shouldered by South Korea. About 35 percent of the construction process was completed by 2005.
That didn’t stop the North’s nuclear ambition.
The second nuclear crisis flared up in 2002 as the North unveiled that it was developing a uranium enrichment program, which could be used as an alternative way to manufacture nuclear weapons beyond its plutonium-based weapons.
KEDO suspended heavy oil supply to the North in December 2002, and the North backtracked on its pledge to freeze nuclear activities. The North withdrew from the NPT in January 2003 and reactivated the old 5-megawatt nuclear reactor the next month. KEDO was put on hold in 2003, and later shut down in 2006.
The war in Iraq broke out in 2003 and the North reacted with willingness to discuss its nuclear program, resulting in trilateral talks among the North, the U.S. and China in Beijing in April 2003. The three-day talks, however, broke down with the North declaring that it had nuclear weapons.
Wider multinational talks were convened and the six countries concerned, including the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia, gathered to discuss the North’s denuclearization in August 2003. The so-called six-party talks did not produce any substantial results through the first three rounds until late June 2004.
Efforts from Beijing and Seoul to intervene followed, and a fourth round of talks were held in July 2005, 13 months after the previous round. In the follow-up talks held in September 2005, the North agreed to the principle of denuclearization in return for security and assistance from the other parties involved in the talks.
The fifth round of the six-party talks was held in November 2005, but it ended with no plan for a next round. The North took issue with Washington’s financial sanction on Banco Delta Asia, a Macao-based bank suspected of being involved in the North’s money laundering and counterfeit currency trafficking. The sanction was regarded as effective, with 24 financial institutions from such countries as China, Vietnam, Singapore, Mongolia and Japan severing deals with the North.
The North demanded the U.S. lift the financial sanction, offering a return to the six-party talks, but the U.S. maintained its stance that the financial sanction was separate from the six-party talks.
Such conflicts between Washington and Pyongyang escalated with the North launching seven missiles in July 2006. With China and Russia joining the moves to denounce the North, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1695 demanding the North restrain from further action regarding the missile launch and countries not provide financial assistance to the North regarding its development of missiles or other weapons of mass destruction.
Amid mounting international sanctions, the North’s foreign ministry announced on Oct. 3, 2006, that it would conduct a nuclear test, claiming that it was necessary to acquire deterrence against what it called the threat of nuclear war from the U.S. and its sanction measures.
The UNSC adopted a chairman statement on Oct. 6, 2006, demanding the North abide by resolution 1695, but three days later, the North conducted a nuclear test in Punggyeri in the northeastern county of Kilju in North Hamgyong Province. That came only three months after the first stage test of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, or missile Taepodong-2, in 2006.
The North’s nuclear test, the first of its kind, was intended to gain the regime international recognition as a nuclear state, but then-U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. would not recognize the North as a nuclear state.
China, the North’s strongest ally, also denounced the North for the nuclear test through its foreign ministry statement on Oct. 9, 2006. China’s top leader Hu Jintao held a summit with South Korea’s then-President Roh Moo-hyun on Oct. 13, 2006, and announced support for the UNSC to take proper measures.
On Oct. 14, 2006, the UNSC adopted resolution 1718, which imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on persons related to the North’s nuclear weapon program. The resolution also urged the North to stop conducting additional nuclear or ballistic missiles tests.
A series of additional sanctions were announced, but at the same time, other six-party talks members made contact with each other to discuss the resumption of the talks. The talks resumed in December 2006, and in the third stage of the fifth round of the talks in February 2007, the parties agreed to the initial actions for the implementation of the joint statement, known as the Feb. 13 agreement. It outlined a 60-day phased implementation of the requirements under the Sept. 19, 2005, agreement, beginning with the shutdown of the production of plutonium at the North’s nuclear sites in Yongbyon and the U.S. supply of heavy oil.
The sixth round of the six-party talks started in March 2007, but immediately after that, China, the chair of the talks, declared a recess as the North refused to come to the negotiating table citing the lingering sanctions of Banco Delta Asia.
The U.S. eased the sanctions and the North shut down the Yongbyon facility in July that year and allowed inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the shutdown. On July 18, 2007, the IAEA confirmed that all five nuclear facilities at Yongbyon were closed.
In the second-stage of the six-party talks in July 2007, the parties agreed to the second phase of actions for the implementation of the joint statement, under which the North promised to declare all information regarding its nuclear activities to the international community by the end of that year and pledged not to share nuclear material or technology with other countries.
The North reaffirmed its pledge to abide by requirements under the Sept. 19, 2005, joint statement and the Feb. 13 agreement during a second inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang on Oct. 2-4, 2007.
The North did not keep the deadline of declaring nuclear-related information and the U.S. urged it to follow up on its pledge, which the North did in June 2008. In the same month, the North also destroyed the cooling tower at Yongbyon.
The progress did not last long and the North said in February 2009 that it was preparing for the launch of the second-stage Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite attached to the Unha-2 rocket, which it claimed was for a peaceful, civilian purpose. It launched the rocket on April 5, 2009. The UNSC gave a statement on April 14, 2009, denouncing the missile launch.
The North withdrew from the six-party talks on the same day, declaring the annulment of all existing agreements made during the previous six-party talks and the restoration of the disarmament process at Yongbyon to its original condition.
The North conducted a second nuclear test again in Punggyeri, Kilju, on May 25, 2009, and the UNSC adopted resolution 1874 on June 12, 2009, banning ballistic missile launches by the North. International concern over its nuclear program deepened in November 2010, when the North unveiled a uranium enrichment facility to visiting U.S. scholars, which could increase the North’s ability to build nuclear weapons. The North is believed to have enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear bombs.
The North, reeling from a botched currency reform and worsening economic conditions, began to express its willingness to return to the six-party talks, but Seoul, Washington and Tokyo demanded it take several measures as a token of its seriousness to restart the six-party talks, including suspension of the uranium enrichment program and improvement in inter-Korean relations. Two deadly attacks on the South in 2010 left 50 South Koreans, including two civilians, dead.
The Kim Jong-il regime was reported to be agreeing to a deal last December with the U.S., including the suspension of the nuclear program, but it was interrupted by the leader’s sudden death on Dec. 17, 2011.
The successive regime led by heir Kim Jong-un agreed with the U.S. last month to stop nuclear testing and long-range missile tests, to suspend their uranium enrichment program and to allow the return of nuclear inspectors in return for 240,000 metric tons of U.S. nutritional aid.
Flying in the face of the deal, the North announced on March 16 that it would launch observation satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 as part of the long-range Unha-3 rocket to put it into orbit between April 12-16 to mark the centennial of the North’s late founder Kim Il Sung’s birth.
By Moon Gwang-lip [joe@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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