Lessons learned from the North Korean nuclear crises

Daedalus

Volumn 139, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 44-56

  Hecker, Siegfried S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 75949110099     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/daed.2010.139.1.44     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. See the article by So Kisok, senior researcher from the dprk (Democratic People'sfrom the Republic of Korea; or, North Korea) Institute for Disarmament and Peace, in ThreeNorth Perspectives on Korean Developments, presented at a July 2009 meeting of the Council Korean for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (cscap) Study Group on Countering thenuclear Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, http://csis.org/publication/pacnet-55-three-perspectives-korean-developments.
2. Scott D. Sagan, Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb, International Security 21 (3) (Winter 1996/1997): 54-86; also updated in
3. Scott D. Sagan, Rethinking the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation: Three Models in Search of a Bomb, in The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order, ed. Victor A. Utgoff (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press, 2000), 17-50.
4. The gas-graphite reactors were patterned after the British Calder Hall Magnox reactor, whose technical specifications were readily available because they were widely dissemi-nated in the United Kingdom.
5. The alternative path for natural uranium-fueled reactors is a heavy water reactor, such as the Canadian candu reactor. This was India's choice for its first reactor, which was constructed by Canada with U.S.-supplied heavy water. However, after India used the plutonium produced by that reactor for its first nuclear test in 1974, it would have been difficult for North Korea to get external assistance. North Korea required external assistance because it did not have the capacity to produce heavy water.
6. The reprocessing facility resembles an extension of the design of the Eurochem reprocessing plant in Belgium.
7. The Agreed Framework signed between the United States and North Korea on October 21, 1994, in Geneva agreed to have North Korea freeze its existing nuclear program. In addition to U.S. supply of lwrs and delivery of heavy fuel oil, the two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations, and work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
8. See Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004) for informative discussions of the Agreed Framework and North Korean crisis in the 1990s.
9. In the late 1990s, Pyongyang is reported to have acquired centrifuge technology from Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, as reported by Pervez Musharraf in his book In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2006). Additional evidence, including the purchase of aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuge rotors from Russia and attempted purchase from Germany, is discussed in Hui Zhang, Assessing North Korea's Uranium Enrichment Capabilities, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 18, 2009), http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/assessing-north-koreas-uranium-enrichment-capabilities.
10. The six-party talks, which were initiated in 2003, involved the United States, North Korea, and its four neighbors: South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia.
11. David Albright and Kevin O'Neill, eds., Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle (Washing-ton, D.C.: Institute of Science and International Security, 2002).
12. For a detailed assessment of the state of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, see Siegfried S. Hecker, Denuclearizing North Korea, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 64 (2) (2008): 44-49, 61-62.
13. All of the plutonium estimates have high uncertainties. If we estimate a 10 percent loss during reprocessing (which includes waste and material held up in plant equipment), that reduces the amount to 36 to 54 kilograms before testing, leaving an estimated 24 to 42 kilo-grams after testing, assuming that North Korea expended 6 kilograms per test (roughly the amount in the Nagasaki plutonium bomb). In 2008, North Korea declared that it had 26 kilograms reprocessed and weaponized. (By that time, it had conducted one nuclear test and it still had roughly 8 kilograms in the fuel rods that were reprocessed in 2009.) Although that number is low, it is possibly correct. 12
14. This point has been made in Siegfried S. Hecker, The Risks of North Korea's Nuclear Restart, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 12, 2009).
15. The evidence for North Korean assistance to Syria is strong; see David Albright and Paul Brannan, The Al Kibar Reactor: Extraordinary Camouflage, Troubling Implications, Institute for Science and International Security (isis) Report, May 12, 2008, http://isis-online.org/publications/syria/index.html. Evidence of cooperation with Libya is less conclusive, yet likely;
16. see David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, Tests Said to Tie Deal on Uranium to North Korea, The New York Times, February 2, 2005. Evidence of nuclear cooperation with Burma is weak, but possible;
17. see Julian Borger, Burma suspected of forming nuclear link with North Korea, Guardian.co.uk, July 21, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/21/burma-north-korea-nuclear-clinton.
18. Siegfried S. Hecker and William Liou, Dangerous Dealings: North Korea's Nuclear Capabilities and the Threat of Export to Iran, Arms Control Today 37 (2) (2007), http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_03/heckerliou
19. Siegfried S. Hecker, From Pyongyang to Tehran, with nukes, op-ed, Foreign Policy (May 26, 2009).
20. Robert Carlin and John Lewis, Negotiating with North Korea: 1992-2007 (Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, January 2008), http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22128/Negotiating_with_North_Korea_1992-2007.pdf.
21. The North-South Denuclearization Agreement signed on December 31, 1991, vowed that neither would test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons. The Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation between South and North Korea (also known as the Basic Agreement), signed on February 19, 1992, reaffirmed a 1972 Joint Communiqué that the North and South are determined to end the state of political and military confrontation and achieve national reconciliation; to avoid armed aggression and hostilities; and to ensure the lessening of tension and the establishment of peace and the desire to realize multifaceted exchanges and cooperation to promote interests and prosperity common to the Korean people. At the time, this agreement was the more significant of the two. The denuclearization agreement never received serious consideration for implementation.
22. Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry led a North Korea policy review for President Clinton. The full report can be found at http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/991012_northkorea_rpt.html.
23. Charles L. Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 25.
24. For a detailed description of the political developments in North Korea during the past decade, see Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008).
25. Natalia Bazhanova, Economic Factors and the Stability of the North Korean Regime, in The North Korean Nuclear Programs, ed. Clay Moltz and Alexandre Mansourov (London: Routledge, 2000), 60.
26. In his 1995 analysis of the North Korean nuclear crisis, Michael Mazarr argued that complete denuclearization may be too high a standard for hard-core proliferators; progress will come instead in fits and starts. Michael J. Mazarr, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).
27. The author is indebted for close readings and suggestions on an earlier draft made by Chaim Braun, Robert Carlin, Thomas Fingar, John Lewis, Michael May, Niko Milonopoulos, Scott Sagan, David Straub, Kevin Veal, and Philip Yun.