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Newsletter:  May 2003/ Issue 4
KEDO and the North Korean Crisis: How We Got Here by Ambassador Charles Kartman

On February 4, Northeast Asia expert Ambassador Charles Kartman visited PNNL’s Richland campus as part of the PNWCGS seminar series. Kartman is a 26-year veteran of the Department of State, and Executive Director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), which was created in 1995 to implement the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea. His presentation was titled “KEDO and the North Korean Nuclear Crisis: How We Got Here.”

“I think you read this morning that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is considering the deployment order to send a dozen B-1Bs and another dozen B-52s and their support aircraft to Guam for possible use in a new Korean Contingency… an engagement which is after all, for our purposes, all about nonproliferation,” Kartman said, beginning his presentation with an observation of current events.

Kartman went on to provide an overview of US North Korea policy from the 1953 Korean Armistice to present. He began by describing US containment policy toward North Korea during the four decades following the armistice as greatly benefiting South Korea, which received much support from the US in developing democratic institutions and an open market economic system, while conditions in North Korea deteriorated.

In 1990, tensions in Northeast Asia soared after the Yongbyon nuclear facility was detected and “suddenly we needed a North Korea policy.” The result was the 1994 Agreed Framework, whereby North Korea would receive two light water reactors to produce electricity under a construction agreement valued at almost $5 billion. It would also receive heavy fuel oil to supply its energy needs in the interim. In exchange, North Korea agreed to cease and dismantle its fissile material production program. This meant the freezing of the Yongbyon reactor and reprocessing plant, and storage of its 8,000 spent fuel rods which could have by now, in addition to the spent fuel from other reactors that were at the time in progress, yielded material for over 100 nuclear weapons.

“Preventing that from happening was no small thing,” Kartman remarked, describing the 1994 accord as a win-win situation for the United States. North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program up front, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had the right to inspections, and only after the IAEA was satisfied would the light water reactors be constructed.

Unfortunately, both parties did not have the same understanding of the agreement. The United States believed it had found a second, less potentially threatening, energy option for North Korea. North Korea thought it had removed the incentive to pursue a nuclear weapons program by laying the groundwork for improved relations with the United States. As time went on and North Korea became less satisfied with prospects for improved relations with the United States and began to “misbehave,” the United States, in turn, became less satisfied with the arrangement, especially Congress. Then, in the middle and late nineties, a series of events brought the Agreed Framework almost to the point of collapse: the United States uncovered what it (mistakenly) believed to be an effort to duplicate the Yongbyon reactor; a North Korean submarine with commandos grounded in South Korea; and North Korea tested its first multi-stage rocket by firing it over Japan.

Former Secretary of Defense, William Perry, charged with salvaging the situation, boiled US priorities with North Korea down to deterring its attainment of nuclear capacity and the means to deliver such a payload, and approached an apprehensive North Korea to begin new talks. Finally, after a year of diplomatic efforts, in “the twilight months” of the Clinton administration following the summit between North and South Korea, a major breakthrough occurred. Kim Jong Il sent his personal envoy to Washington, DC for meetings with senior US officials. Those meetings resulted in a Joint Communiqué providing the basis for moving relations to a new stage. The Joint Communiqué endorsed the concept of transparency in carrying out the (Continued on next page) Agreed Framework and agreed that neither government would have hostile intent toward the other. Following the visit by Kim’s special envoy to Washington, Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited Pyongyang, where she held over 10 hours of talks with Kim Jong Il. During that visit, the two sides laid the groundwork for an agreement regarding North Korea’s missile production, deployment and sales, while the issue of verification remained unresolved. However, after the change of administrations in the United States, senior level contact between the US and North Korea came to a standstill, with no meaningful discourse taking place until late 2002.

In the meantime, North Korea was reaching out to its neighbors: North Korea apologized to South Korea after a maritime clash ended in gunfire; it admitted to having abducted Japanese citizens, promising that it would never happen again; it affirmed its adherence to all of its nuclear nonproliferation agreements with Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi; and Japan agreed to provide economic assistance after the two sides normalized relations. These shifts in DPRK policy—constituting important changes in juche, fundamental to the North—were extremely important because they had Kim Jong Il’s personal and public stamp of approval. The only piece missing to the puzzle of North Korea’s new positioning in the world was improved relations with the United States.

Then, in October of 2002, during the first real diplomatic contact with the new US administration, the United States made it clear that it found North Korea, which was discovered to have a highly enriched uranium facility under construction, was in breach of the Agreed Framework. Soon after, the US suspended delivery of fuel to North Korea, resulting in Kim Jong Il’s announcement that the Yongbyon nuclear facility would be reopened.

“This is a huge jump from October to now,” said Kartman. “Within a few weeks, at most, plutonium will be pulled out of the spent fuel rods (at Yongbyon)… and what used to be a hypothetical 1-2 nuclear weapons will become 6-8… North Korea could afford to test at that point and nothing would prevent them from selling within this year without using military operations.”

Underscoring the negative implications for regional and global nonproliferation if the current impasse with North Korea is not solved, as well as the enormous level of estimated casualties—Seoul is in “artillery range” of North Korea—Kartman stressed the importance and feasibility of arriving at a diplomatic solution.

“Even as we are considering the B-1Bs going to Guam… we should have an alternative to suggest to North Korea,” he said, expressing the importance of providing alternatives when negotiating with North Korea.

Acknowledging that the United States and North Korea “do not speak the same language… they are two different systems premised on different things…” and that negotiations can, at times, require almost “infinite patience,” Kartman stated that he did not believe the situation to be impossible. Since the discourse with the US has ended, North Korea has made it publicly clear that it is open to further talks on three conditions: 1) It wants a nonaggression treaty; 2) It wants the US to legally recognize its sovereignty; and 3) It wants the United States to agree not to interfere with its economic development.

Ending the presentation by expressing his firm belief that the situation with North Korea can be assuaged, Kartman stated, “When I hear the other side—particularly when the other side is North Korea—establish, as its starting point, conditions that set the bar that low, I want to do that negotiation.”