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Analysis: The Path to Pyongyang

Council on Foreign Relations

July 16, 2007
Prepared by: Lee Hudson Teslik

Mistrust pervades Washington’s dealings with Pyongyang so thoroughly that any deal, however seemingly straightforward, prompts a double-take. Even as UN inspectors confirmed (Korea Times) North Korea had turned off its primary nuclear reactor under terms agreed following February’s Six-Party Talks, U.S. and international officials remain cautious. While hailing the Yongbyon shutdown, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reiterated that other facilities still needed to be inspected and that steps remain toward the ultimate goal of fully decommissioning the reactors (FT).

Moreover, even assuming the current wave of shutdowns proceeds in good faith, many questions remain unanswered. The Economist argues there is good reason to doubt Pyongyang will easily agree to the next demand: fully disclosing its nuclear activities and moving toward a complete disarmament of the Korean peninsula. For starters, negotiators have been here before, and with little to show for it. The July 2007 developments simply return negotiations to where they were in 1994, after a deal reached by President Clinton stemmed North Korea’s plutonium production. But as this CFR.org Crisis Guide explains, Pyongyang is believed to have gone ahead with uranium enrichment, a different path toward developing nuclear weapons, the 1994 pact notwithstanding. Pyongyang only restarted the Yongbyon reactor in 2002 after President Bush confronted Kim Jong-Il over these separate enrichment activities.

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.