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Analysis: About Face on North Korea

Council on Foreign Relations

March 6, 2007
Prepared by: Carin Zissis

As the United States hosts North Korea for talks about normalizing a tempestuous relationship, questions swirl around Washington’s suddenly softer approach to Pyongyang. After years of refusing bilateral talks with the Hermit Kingdom—one of the three members of the “Axis of Evil”—the Bush administration appears to have switched tactics. Christopher Hill, the State Department’s senior diplomat for East Asian affairs, sits down in New York this week for direct negotiations with Kim Kye-Gwan to hammer out an agreement reached during February Six-Party Talks. Under the pact, North Korea will receive fuel oil, economic assistance, and humanitarian aid in return for shutting down and sealing its nuclear facilities within sixty days.

In a new interview with CFR.org's Bernard Gwertzman, North Korea expert Donald Oberdorfer, who made an official visit to Pyongyang in 2002, says negotions represent inportant progress. Still, he warns, “[L]ike anything with North Korea, nothing is simple. There are a lot of moving parts of this agreement that are going to have to be addressed before reduction or abolition of their nuclear weapons program.” The administration has suggested it may halt financial sanctions against a Macao-based bank where North Korea has laundered counterfeit dollars and, if talks go well, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may visit Beijing to take part in the talks with North Korea in April. But the return of inspectors to North Korea’s facilities could test the Bush administration’s 2002 assertions that Pyongyang had procured the necessary equipment required for a uranium enrichment program (LAT). The charge led to the suspension of the Agreed Framework negotiated during the Clinton presidency. This CFR.org Crisis Guide provides a complete look at the issues behind North Korea’s nuclear program.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.