On the morning of July 9, 1994, North Koreans woke up to hear that “there will be a critical announcement at noon on TV. Everybody must watch it.” When the hour arrived, twenty-one million anxious North Koreans gathered around television sets to see a solemn official, dressed in black, read a prepared statement:
We, the working class, collective farmers, People’s Army soldiers, intellectuals, young students, Central Committee of the Party, Military Commission of the Party, National Defense Commission of the DPRK, Central People’s Committee, and Administration Council report with mournful heart to the people that the General Secretary of the Chosun Workers’ Party, Premier of the DPRK and Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung, passed away unexpectedly at 2AM on July 8, 1994.
The cause of Kim’s sudden demise was a massive heart attack. At the time of his death, North Korea was a failed state. It was, as one observer wrote, “an island of stagnation in a sea of East Asian growth.”1 For most of North Korea’s existence, Kim Il Sung had been able to rely on the support of both China and the Soviet Union. Following the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution and Sino-American rapprochement, North Korea depended almost exclusively on the largesse of the Soviet Union, which until 1984 provided more than $1 billion in foreign aid and credits annually, mostly in soft loans that P’yŏngyang did not repay. An Eastern European scholar noted, “A distinctive feature of the creditor-debtor relationship … was continuous long-term loans extended by the Soviet Union and frequent deferral of North Korean repayment.”2 North Koreans could not even “produce enough clothing for themselves.”3
The pattern of defaulting on loans was characteristic of North Korea’s trade regime and foreign policy to secure continual and concessional foreign capital. According to the economist Nicholas Eberstadt, this system is distinguished by a “political conception of international economic relations wherein goods and services are understood to flow not so much through voluntary commercial exchange between contractually equal partners, but through a struggle between states and systems.” In other words, North Korea viewed the loans not as contractual obligations, but as rewards, “as a sort of tribute from abroad.”4 The North’s peculiar triangular relationship with the Soviet Union and China had encouraged this pattern to develop and continue. The “tributary” system, however, ended rather abruptly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the end of the cold war in Europe. Russia and China’s abandonment of the “friendship price” system and demand for hard currency for exports resulted in a steep decline in the North Korean economy. The DPRK had fallen into a classic poverty trap. Stagnant economic growth stifled investments to grow the economy. The North’s economy was degraded by a lack of innovation and by a dependence on imported raw materials with no resources to pay for them.
Meanwhile, South Korea was booming, its success highlighted by the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, which marked a turning point in the city’s status and relationship with the world. South Koreans dramatically showcased to billions around the world that they were no longer the “poverty-stricken Asian war victim” of the past, but a vibrant, rich, and modern society. The contrast with the North could not have been more striking.5 Furthermore, South Korea had just made a peaceful and successful transition to democracy. On December 16, 1987, after nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, South Koreans chose their first democratically elected president, a former general and Chŏn Tu-hwan’s close friend No T’ae-u. This transition was in large part due to students who came together with ordinary citizens during the summer of 1987 to demand a direct presidential election. After weeks of protests, Chun’s chosen successor, No T’ae-u, conceded to these demands. But during the election a split in the opposition led to No’s victory with just 36 percent of the popular vote. Nevertheless, the election had been fair and democracy secured. The election and the Olympics symbolized South Korea’s political and economic coming of age. For the first time in over five decades, the South could claim victory in its legitimacy war with the North. But could this victory end the war?
The time had come to find out. On July 7, 1988, four months after his inauguration and on the eve of the Seoul Olympics, President No announced a new approach to relations with North Korea. In his memoirs, No wrote that he had “agonized over how to resolve the stand-off with the North” and then thought of how the Qin emperor had defeated his enemies at the end of the Warring States period (BCE 475–221) and unified China. “The strategy used by Emperor Qin called for ‘establishing close relations with distant states in order to destroy the enemy nearby.’” No therefore “decided to invoke this strategy of making friends with distant enemies.” Nordpolitik, as the policy was known, signaled South Korea’s new openness to communist nations around the world and led to the South’s predominance over the North in a changing international climate. “We would follow the road to P’yŏngyang through Eastern Europe, Moscow and Beijing.”6
Hungary was the first communist country to respond and establish diplomatic relations. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, South Korean aid was a key factor. South Korea offered a loan of $625 million to help Hungary’s struggling economy. Full diplomatic relations were established on February 1, 1989, over P’yŏngyang’s vociferous objections. The Soviet Union soon followed. Until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, South Korea was little known and not of any significant concern to the Soviet Union. After the success of the Seoul Olympics, Moscow took steps to establish relations with South Korea. In 1989, trade offices were opened in Moscow and Seoul, and direct sea and air routes established between the two countries.7 Politically, in a dramatic turnaround, Moscow dropped its opposition to South Korean membership in the United Nations. These developments were, naturally, distressing to the North Korean regime. Hoping to halt Moscow’s drift toward Seoul, Kim Il Sung invited Gorbachev to P’yŏngyang. Gorbachev was scheduled to visit China in the spring of 1989, and Kim asked him to stop on his way to Beijing. But despite Kim’s desperate pleas, Gorbachev declined.
The rejection was a blow to Kim, who had wanted to obtain Moscow’s reassurance of continued support. Gorbachev’s trip to China was also disturbing because it signaled the beginning of a closer relation between Moscow and Beijing. North Korea had survived by playing the two communist powers against each other, but this leverage would no longer be available. Gorbachev further inflamed Kim’s anxieties by announcing, while in China, his new friendship with Seoul. It was no comfort to Kim that Gorbachev viewed better relations with South Korea as having no effect on Moscow’s relations with the North since the main purpose of his Korea policy was “helping the peace process on the Korean peninsula.”8
In May 1990, Gorbachev met with his senior foreign policy advisor Anatoly Dobrynin, the legendary Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986. He instructed Dobrynin to convey to President No the message that Gorbachev was willing to meet him in San Francisco in June after his summit meeting with President George H. W. Bush in Washington. He also asked Dobrynin to explore the possibility of obtaining a major loan from South Korea. Dobrynin recalled that Gorbachev simply said, “We need some money.” The San Francisco meeting was confirmed, and when No and Gorbachev met, the Soviet leader gave his commitment to “peaceful reunification” of the Koreas and the two discussed the normalization of relations between their countries. At the press conference after the meeting, an ebullient No told reporters that “as a result of today’s meeting, the cold war ice on the Korean peninsula has now begun to crack.” He reaffirmed that “Seoul did not wish to isolate North Korean regime” and that the ultimate goal of Nordpolitik was to induce North Korea to open up to the world.9
Events moved quickly after the meeting in San Francisco. On September 30, 1990, Moscow and Seoul established full diplomatic relations. This was originally supposed to have taken place on January 1, 1991, but the Soviets decided to move the date forward due to the extremely rude treatment they received from P’yŏngyang. “The communiqué stated the date of normalized relations as ‘1 January 1991,’ “ No recalled, “and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, with his own pen, crossed it out and wrote ‘30 September 1990’ right at the foreign ministers meeting.” It was, the South Korean president wrote triumphantly, “a gift from an angry Shevardnadze.”10
The Soviet Union also agreed to stop all military aid and cooperation with North Korea in return for South Korea’s economic assistance. “The Soviet Union kept its promise and thereafter not a single Soviet fighter jet, tank or missile was shipped to North Korea,” No later remarked. “As a result, for $1.4 billion in economic loans, South Korean security gained tens of billions of dollars worth of security.”11 Gorbachev explained his reasons for the abrupt change in North Korean policy in his memoir: “It was clear that we could not, for obsolete ideological reasons (i.e. because of our ties with North Korea), continue opposing the establishment of normal relations with his [No’s] country which showed an exceptional dynamism and had become a force to be reckoned with, both in the Asia-Pacific region and in the wider world.”12
China also moved toward a closer relationship with South Korea. In May 1991, Chinese Premier Li Peng announced that China would not oppose admission of both North and South Korea to the United Nations. This was another huge blow to Kim Il Sung. Since the only possible veto against South Korean membership was the Soviet Union, which had already announced its support for Seoul, Kim had no choice but to follow the winds and announce that North Korea would apply for UN membership too. Kim had long opposed dual membership for North and South Korea, but it was now evident that the world considered the two Koreas as separate sovereign entities. Adding to North Korea’s woes was China’s announcement in early 1992 that it would normalize relations with Seoul. On August 24, 1992, China and South Korea established diplomatic relations. The previous December the Soviet Union had dissolved.13
The dramatic transformation of the geopolitical situation around the divided peninsula at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s appeared to spell the doom of the North Korean regime. Its economy in shambles, traditional sources of support all gone, and its founding and inspiring leader dead, few believed that the anachronistic regime could survive much longer. Even South Korean students became disillusioned, knowing full well that Kim’s utopia was a chimera and the South had won the war. Yet, despite these setbacks, North Korea did not collapse, nor does it appear likely that it will any time soon. The regime continues to present itself to its people as a defiant power that, in stark contrast to the “Yankee colony in the south,” embodies the true spirit of the self-reliant Korean nation. The tenaciousness with which it still clings to the myth of its greatness and fearlessness in the face of great odds defies easy predictions about its future. North Korea’s refusal to go the way of other communist states demonstrates the enduring legacy of Kim Il Sung as well as the power of the unending Korean War to shape contemporary events.
What is the secret to the extraordinary enduring power of North Korea and the first and only communist dynasty, the Kim family regime? Traditional, historical, and ideological factors—the traditional patriarchal and hierarchical social structure of Korea’s Confucian past, Korea’s history of isolationism, and the fierce anti-imperialist nationalism that developed during the colonial period—account for part of the answer, but part also lies in Kim Il Sung’s strategy for national survival, which provided just enough material sustenance to avert collapse. The strategy was characterized by a unique “aid-maximizing economic strategy” whereby external aid rather than development and economic growth became the indispensable foundation for national viability.14 Although Kim Il Sung touted self-determination (chuch’e) as the fundamental principle of his regime, it was a policy that in reality required dependency. One of the more extraordinary features of Kim’s foreign policy was his uncanny ability to navigate between Great Power interests to achieve his own ends. He was the original author of the Korean War, but it was Stalin who made it possible and Mao who largely fought it. After the war, he was able to secure his position by playing China and the Soviet Union against each other, as well as obtain vast amounts of economic aid from both powers. The end of the cold war closed North Korea’s sources of support, but Kim again showed his extraordinary ability to leverage competing interests for his gain, this time by playing the nuclear card.
The North Korean nuclear program began in 1985 after three decades of lobbying the Soviet Union for help. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Kremlin had been unwilling to support North Korea’s repeated requests for a nuclear power plant because of its suspicion of Kim Il Sung’s belligerent intentions. Since P’yŏngyang was hardly a cooperative ally, this refusal was understandable. North Korea’s worsening economic condition was another reason for the refusal. The plan was expensive, and North Korea had no means to pay for it. The DPRK made another request in early 1976, even as highly contentious negotiations over North Korea’s debt were taking place in Moscow.15
Given the frosty relationship between the two communist countries, the dire state of the North’s economy, and the long-term pattern of North Korean belligerence, why did the Soviet leadership finally change its mind and approve of nuclear cooperation with the P’yŏngyang regime in 1985? A major reason was renewed cold war tensions and the increasing international isolation of the Soviet Union during this period. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the United States decided to increase diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union during a period when it was already suffering economically. Sino-Soviet relations were also at a standstill. While Moscow’s relations with China and the United States worsened, North Korea’s strategic importance to the Soviet Union increased. As one observer put it, “Nuclear cooperation between Moscow and P’yŏngyang was one carrot that the Chinese could not match.”16 At the same time, since the Soviets knew they could not maintain effective control over the P’yŏngyang regime, they wanted to be sure that Kim Il Sung’s hands were “tied by as many international agreements as possible.”17 The Soviet Union thus agreed to supply four LWRs in 1985, but only if North Korea joined the NPT, which it did in December of that year. The NPT required signatories to sign a safeguard inspection agreement within eighteen months that permitted inspections to identify violations.
However, due to a mix-up in paperwork, the inspection agreements were never signed. By then, the prospects of North Korea receiving the Soviet reactors had dimmed, owing to the waning fortunes of the Soviet economy. Kim Il Sung was stuck with the treaty commitments but without the Soviet reactors. He was thus forced to embark on an indigenous nuclear program at a place called Yŏngbyŏn. It was not until 1991, after the Persian Gulf War (code-named Operation Desert Storm), that pressure to inspect the North Korean nuclear facilities became an international issue. Until then, the IAEA had limited inspections of civilian nuclear sites that NPT signatories had voluntarily reported, but the Gulf War crisis revealed that Iraq, an NPT signatory, had undisclosed secret nuclear sites. Facing “withering criticism” for ineffectiveness and timidity, the IAEA and its new director, Hans Blix, decided to get tough. North Korea became its first target.18
When North Korean officials refused to allow the inspection of two installations at Yŏngbyŏn that American intelligence had identified as potential sites for secret nuclear activity, a showdown with the IAEA became inevitable. The IAEA told the North Koreans that if these installations were not open to inspections it would ask the UN Security Council to consider sanctions. The situation, thought Blix, tested the credibility and standing of the IAEA, but more important, allowing North Korea to ignore the required inspections could fundamentally undermine the NPT and the global nonproliferation program. On March 12, 1993, P’yŏngyang made the stunning announcement that North Korea intended to withdraw from the NPT rather than submit to inspections. Three days later, the IAEA Board voted to hand the matter over to the UN Security Council and ordered their inspectors home.
With this defiant act, North Korea had seized the initiative. It was now up to the United States, South Korea, and the international community to persuade P’yŏngyang not to withdraw from the NPT. The United States offered to improve political and economic relations and give security assurances if North Korea remained in the NPT and allowed IAEA inspections. When it became clear that the negotiations were going nowhere, the new Clinton administration decided to ask the United Nations to lay the groundwork for economic sanctions. The move came hours after North Korea threatened war in March 1994 if Washington and Seoul mounted a pressure campaign. In an ominous exchange between North and South Korean officials, captured on video, the North Korean delegate warned his South Korean counterpart that “Seoul is not far away from here. If a war breaks out Seoul will turn into a sea of fire.” The statement was so extraordinary that the South Korean government broadcasted it on national television, instantly enflaming anti–North Korean passions. Realizing that the comments had backfired, Kim Il Sung went out of his way to disown the “sea of fire” comment, saying that it had been a “mistake” by the negotiator.19
Just three months after his inauguration, in January 1994, President Bill Clinton faced the first international crisis of his administration. As the United States pushed for UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, the P’yŏngyang regime repeatedly denounced the move, declaring “sanctions are a declaration of war.” China and Russia became concerned as the United States and North Korea inexorably moved toward direct confrontation. Prime Minister Li Peng warned that “pressure … can only complicate the situation on the Korean peninsula, and it will add to the tension.”20 Russia was also reluctant to support UN sanctions for similar reasons, and it proposed as an alternative a forum with the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan, Russia, and the IAEA “to work out a balanced approach to denuclearization and international guarantees for North Korea.” The Americans were “miffed” mostly because the negotiation track had been tried in vain for over a year and they thought such a conference would lead nowhere.21
Unlike the Americans, however, China and Russia had been dealing directly with North Korean recalcitrance for over forty years; both countries had successfully thwarted previous North Korean plans to restart another war on the Korean peninsula. They also understood what Washington apparently did not: that the crisis was neither unique nor isolated but linked to a long series of provocations aiming to bolster Kim Il Sung’s hold on power during a period of political uncertainty. The North Korean leadership would view UN sanctions as an international slap in the face that directly challenged the myth of Kim Il Sung as a fearsome and respected leader. It was to uphold and strengthen this myth that had been behind the capture of the Pueblo in 1968. Neither China nor Russia wanted to humiliate Kim Il Sung in front of the world. They feared destabilizing the regime, for its collapse would likely result in millions of refugees crossing the Chinese and Russian borders, a calamitous event. If necessary, China and Russia were willing to exercise their veto power in the UN Security Council to stop a sanctions resolution. “It’s an international rule now to solve all issues through dialogue,” declared Zhang Tingyan, China’s ambassador to South Korea. “Why should the North Korean nuclear problem be an exception? China cannot agree to sanctions or any other measures.”22
Japan too opposed sanctions for a variety of domestic concerns. Sanctions would require stopping the substantial flow of money sent by ethnic Koreans in Japan to their relatives in North Korea. These remittances were estimated to be roughly $600 million annually. Such an action could expose Japan to a severe backlash from pro-North residents, including the possibility of violent acts and terrorism.23 If the North launched another attack, U.S. bases in Japan would undoubtedly be targeted with missiles. A war or a North Korean collapse also raised the specter of a massive influx of refugees.
South Korea, fearing both war and North Korean collapse, even if the latter resulted in fulfilling the long-cherished dream of reunification, was ambivalent about sanctions as well. Attitudes toward reunification had changed after South Koreans learned the economic and social cost of German reunification. “On the one hand, the absolute majority wants to see reunification,” said Kil Jeong Woo, director of policy studies at the Research Institute for National Unification (RINU), a government think tank in Seoul. “That’s the emotional side. On the economic side, after witnessing the German experience, we should be more realistic.” With estimates for the costs of absorbing North Korea ranging from $200 billion to more than $1 trillion over a decade, many South Koreans had trepidations over what reunification might mean for their newfound prosperity. RINU calculated in 1994 that “raising North Korea’s economic level to 60 percent that of the South would take 10 years and cost $40 billion each year, an amount equal to one-eighth of South Korea’s annual economic output.” Rather than a “big bang” approach to unification, which could result in millions of refugees streaming across the border, the South Korean government began emphasizing “stability, not unity.”24
In pressing for UN sanctions, the Clinton administration was thus swimming against a strong current of opposition. With Chinese and Russian vetoes of a sanctions resolution certain, North Korea was under no pressure to compromise. Ironically, the same regional concerns that had frustrated Carter’s efforts to withdraw U.S. ground troops from South Korea in the 1970s also complicated Clinton’s attempts to get tough over the North Korean nuclear program. No one in the region wanted to upset the fragile balance of power on the Korean peninsula and risk another conflict. This was the dilemma that the Clinton administration faced when Kim Il Sung raised the ante and precipitated a showdown that would lead the United States and North Korea to the brink of war.
On April 19, 1994, North Korea notified the IAEA of its intention to withdraw spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor in Yŏngbyŏn, but without IAEA monitoring. The announcement was a direct rebuff of both the United States and the UN, which had repeatedly warned North Korean authorities not to take this action. Plutonium could be extracted from the rods at a reprocessing plant in Yŏngbyŏn to provide P’yŏngyang with the main ingredient for a nuclear weapon. Secretary of Defense William Perry declared that Washington would seek sanctions if the fuel rods were withdrawn without IAEA scrutiny, calling the situation “a very substantial near-term crisis.” The estimate was that there was enough plutonium in the eight thousand rods for four or five nuclear weapons. The removal of the rods without IAEA monitoring posed another serious problem. In essence, the IAEA would not be able to determine the history of previous refueling operations and thus the total number of rods available for reprocessing and the total amount of plutonium North Korea might have accumulated. The agency complained that if the withdrawal was not monitored, “it would result in irreparable loss of the agency’s ability to verify that plutonium-laden fuel was not being diverted for use in nuclear weapons.” In 1986, for example, the CIA estimated that the Yŏngbyŏn reactor had been shut down for up to 110 days. It was unclear how many of the eight thousand rods might have been replaced at that time, but CIA estimates put the amount of plutonium that might have been obtained to be enough for one or two nuclear bombs. When the actual unloading of the fuel rods began in early May of 1994, the IAEA sent a team led by Dmitri Perricos to witness the operation. According to Perricos, the unloading process was “a big mess,” which he believed was deliberate to keep the world guessing on how much plutonium the North possessed, in a high-stakes game of brinkmanship.25
The Joint Chiefs were particularly incensed and were asking, in effect, “How long are we going to let them walk all over us?” The Clinton administration once again pressed for UN sanctions, but the difficulty in devising and winning support for sanctions, especially from China and Russia, undercut the message of resolve that the United States sought to convey. In secret, a military option was now put on the table. On June 10, Secretary Perry presented to President Clinton a detailed contingency plan for bombing Yŏngbyŏn. Military considerations included reinforcing military forces in Korea and the region to deter any North Korean military action in response to UN sanctions. These options ranged from two thousand personnel to fill out wartime headquarters staff, to a major force of fifty thousand troops, four hundred aircraft, and fifty ships, an option that would require a reserve call-up and the evacuation of U.S. and foreign noncombatant personnel from South Korea. Clinton was told that renewed war could result in 52,000 U.S. and 490,000 South Korean military causalities in the first ninety days, in addition to a large number of civilian casualties. Furthermore, the inevitable collapse of the North Korean regime would send millions of refugees flooding across Asia, with destabilizing effects in China, South Korea, and Japan.26
On June 16, Clinton and his advisors considered the military options. Perry reminded the group of the danger of starting a cycle of measures and countermeasures that a military contingency to deter North Korean action against sanctions could spark. He evoked Barbara Tuchman’s account in The Guns of August of such a cycle propelled by “cross-purposes, misunderstandings and inadvertence” in the days leading to World War I. Could this cycle be stopped? The meeting was in its second hour when Clinton was informed that former president Jimmy Carter was on the line from P’yŏngyang. Carter had offered his services to Clinton in a last-ditch effort to resolve the crisis and went to P’yŏngyang ostensibly as a private citizen in response to a standing invitation to visit that Kim Il Sung had extended. Robert Gallucci, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, stepped out of the Cabinet Room to take the call. Carter told Gallucci that Kim Il Sung had agreed not to expel the IAEA inspectors and to keep the monitoring equipment in place in return for resuming talks and no sanctions. Kim, in effect, had promised to freeze his nuclear program. He would not place new fuel rods in the reactors, nor would he reprocess the irradiated ones that had already been removed. Carter said that he planned to describe the progress he had made with the North Korean dictator on CNN. Stunned, Gallucci returned to the meeting with the amazing news.27
There was skepticism over whether Carter had obtained anything new. Kim did not say he would stop reprocessing or stop producing plutonium. “What we have here is nothing new,” one White House official complained. “The problem is that North Korea now has a former president as its spokesperson.” The most serious concern was his unexpected public call to “stop the sanctions activity in the United Nations.” “In my opinion, the pursuit of sanctions is counterproductive in this particular and unique society,” Carter declared. “I don’t think the threat of sanctions has any effect at all on North Korea as far as damage to its society or economy is concerned. The declaration of sanctions would be considered by [North Koreans] as an insult to their country … and a personal insult to their so-called Great Leader [Kim Il Sung] by branding him a criminal.” Kim had played a weak hand brilliantly. Carter’s opposition to sanctions and his public pronouncement presented a powerful case to the world. Carter’s words humanized the North Korean dictator, making him look rather grandfatherly and quite reasonable; they also fed into the North Korean myth of Kim’s respectability during a period of political crisis for the North Korean regime. Carter seemed oblivious to how his efforts might be perceived. By lending respectability that Kim craved, Carter had undercut the strength of the American negotiating position. “President Kim Il Sung understood that I was speaking as a private citizen, not as a representative of the U.S.,” Carter later insisted.28 To most people, Carter was anything but a private U.S. citizen.
Back in Washington after the two-day visit, Carter declared the crisis “over.” Although few believed this was the case, since there was still no formal agreement, the visit did provide a breakthrough: the chance to step back from the brink of war and the possibility of a North-South Korean summit. Before he entered North Korea, by ground across the DMZ on June 15, he had met with South Korean President Kim Yŏng-sam, who gave Carter a trump card to play—a proposal for a North-South summit without any preconditions. Carter brought up the proposed summit during a boat ride he and his wife, Rosalynn, took with Kim. On the seven-hour journey down the Taedong River, Kim and Carter “had an interesting conversation,” which included discussion on an “unprecedented meeting between him [Kim Il Sung] and South Korean president Kim Young Sam [Kim Yŏng-sam] to be arranged by me at an early date.” Thus, quite suddenly, the momentum toward military confrontation was halted. Carter later insisted that North Korea would have gone to war had the United States pursued UN sanctions, conducted an air strike, or sent significant military reinforcement, but in light of North Korea’s long history of provocations and backing down when confronted with Armageddon, this seems unlikely. In retrospect, Carter’s mission bought time for North Korea, but it also bought time for the Clinton administration to avert a catastrophic showdown on the Korean peninsula. Clinton seized the opportunity made by Carter to negotiate a new deal with P’yŏngyang. Kim Il Sung had survived once again.29
The death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994 did not seriously affect the results of the Carter mission. The U.S.-DPRK nuclear talks began the next day, and the Americans were relieved that the Great Leader’s unexpected demise did not change North Korea’s desire for a deal nor alter its basic negotiating position. What did change was the prospect for a North-South summit. After weeks of debate on whether an official condolence should be announced, Seoul not only decided not to offer such a condolence but also announced that arrests would be made to anyone who publicly expressed such a sentiment. The stern announcement by the Unification Ministry had followed a North Korean announcement inviting South Korean mourners to come to P’yŏngyang to pay their respects to the Great Leader. The North guaranteed their safety, declaring “they could enter either through Panmunjom [sic] or through a third country.” The North’s invitation to those who found “it hard to repress their bitter grief” was angrily denounced by Seoul. It decided to block a plan hatched by leftist students to send a condolence mission to P’yŏngyang. Seoul suspected that North Korea would use the invitation to exploit the students in order to shore up the regime’s legitimacy at home, by showing its citizens how much South Koreans respected the Great Leader. Instead, on the day of Kim’s funeral, Seoul released hundreds of Soviet documents, obtained by President Kim Yŏng-sam during a visit to Russia in early June, which conclusively revealed that Kim Il Sung was behind the North Korean attack on June 25, 1950.30 P’yŏngyang resumed its anti–South Korean rhetoric, which had been suspended because of the anticipated summit. North-South relations rapidly deteriorated and hope for reconciliation evaporated.
Despite the North-South spat, U.S.-DPRK nuclear talks resumed in Geneva on August 5, 1994. By the time of Kim Il Sung’s death, it was expected that Kim Jong Il would succeed him in the first dynastic succession in communist history. The short, plump, moon-faced man with a pompadour had a reputation for hard drinking and womanizing. A single portrait of him, a rarity in North Korea, is hung in the entranceway of the Yŏngbyŏn nuclear complex. Beyond the basic elements of the provisional agreement that Carter had negotiated with Kim Il Sung, freezing of the nuclear program and foregoing proliferation-prone nuclear facilities in return for two LWRs, there were a number of other items of concern to both sides. The most contentious issue was what to do with the eight thousand spent fuel rods that North Korea had removed in May. The United States wanted the rods to be moved to a third country so that the plutonium could not be extracted from them in the future. Another issue was the dismantlement of North Korea’s plutonium production facilities, the reactors, and the reprocessing plant. A final issue concerned international inspections of two key nuclear waste sites, which could reveal the amount of plutonium North Korea may already have accumulated. “There’ll be no overall settlement until the question of the past has been settled,” declared Gallucci, the U.S. official chosen to lead the negotiations with North Korea.31
The terms of the accord that was eventually brokered heavily favored North Korea. First, North Korea was not forced to relinquish its eight thousand spent fuel rods to a third country. Instead, the United States and North Korea were to “cooperate in finding a method” to “dispose of the fuel in a safe manner that does not involve reprocessing” in North Korea. There was no provision for dismantling the reactors or the reprocessing plant. Although North Korea agreed to stop work on two other reactors, it was allowed to keep the only working reactor operating until the two promised LWRs were “nearly” complete. Finally, on the most contentious issue, the IAEA’s demand for “special inspections” of two nuclear waste sites, North Korea did not have to allow inspections until a significant portion of the LWR project was complete. The agreement did require North Korea to let the IAEA inspect the nuclear sites acknowledged by the North Koreans, “but only after the supply contracts for the LWR project are done.” In effect, North Korea would remain in violation of the NPT until the shipment of these “key components” which might take a decade or more.32
IAEA officials were furious. North Korea would continue to possess nuclear spent fuel for years. This would leave open the possibility that if it ever renounced the agreement, it could kick out the international inspectors and resume its bomb project. The United States also agreed to supply five hundred thousand tons of heavy fuel oil “to make up for the energy foregone by North Korea before the LWRs came into operation.”33 In effect, the Americans agreed to a new foreign aid program that would help keep North Korean factories running and homes heated for years to come.
North Korea predictably hailed the Agreed Framework, signed on October 21, 1994, as a triumph of North Korean diplomacy. North Korea’s domestic propaganda celebrated the agreement as an “abject Yankee surrender” that reinforced the image of cowering Americans who yielded to North Korea’s fearsome power. “America had no choice but to grovel.”34 Seoul was less enthusiastic. As part of the Agreed Framework, the South Korean government was supposed to build the promised LWRs. One aspect of the Agreed Framework was the establishment of a consortium of nations called KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Organization), which also included the United States and Japan, that was responsible for implementing the energy-related parts of the Agreed Framework. Although South Korea, as part of this consortium, had been tasked to build the LWRs, it had been given little say in actually formulating the main provisions of the agreement. Many South Koreans felt resentful. In particular, North Korea’s rejection of South Korean reactors was especially galling. In the ongoing legitimacy war with the South, the concept of South Korea “aiding” North Korea, much less providing reactors, did not sit well with P’yŏngyang, which continued to belittle the South as puppets of Washington. President Kim Yŏng-sam was equally adamant that Seoul would not foot the bill for reactors from another country. Feeling aggrieved at having been left out of the negotiations, and fearing once again that the United States might sell Seoul short and conclude a separate deal with the North, Kim Yŏng-sam demanded South Korea’s inclusion in the process.35 In the end, Washington persuaded Seoul to accept a compromise. North Korea would accept South Korean reactors if no mention was explicitly made that they were from South Korea.
The Agreed Framework also received a skeptical response in the United States. President Clinton defended it with the argument that North Korea committed to freeze and “gradually” dismantle its nuclear program. More important, the agreement was seen as a necessary step to end North Korea’s self-imposed isolation from the international community. Critics, however, insisted that the administration had made a bad deal. A Washington Post editorial opined, “How can such an agreement even be defended? … It pays North Korea, and handsomely, for returning to the nonnuclear obligations it took on and violated and ideally should not have been paid for at all … The accord sets an international precedent that lets the North Koreans keep hiding for years the very facilities whose inspection would show their nuclear cheating to date.” The New York Times headline simply read, “Clinton Approves a Plan to Give Aid to North Koreans.”36 Faced with a choice between war or compromise, the Clinton administration had opted for compromise.
Three weeks after the agreement was signed, the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in the fall elections in 1994. Predictably, the Agreed Framework was severely criticized by the new Republican majority. Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on East Asian Affairs, said he would block the United States from purchasing the promised heavy oil. “I don’t support the administration’s concessions which I find totally unacceptable,” he declared. “We have given away the store. I don’t know what we’ve gotten in return other than promises.” Other prominent Republicans, including Bob Dole of Kansas and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, also lambasted the agreement. “It is always possible to get an agreement when you give enough away,” said Dole.37 Appropriating funds for the heavy oil was, according to one administration official, like “going through the rings of hell.”38 As a result, the shipments of heavy oil often arrived late. Work on the two LWRs also began falling behind schedule. With the nuclear crisis seemingly behind them, the Americans no longer considered North Korea all that important. Besides, conditions in North Korea were steadily declining. By 1995, reports from travelers and defectors recounted devastating stories of a terrible famine sweeping across the nation. North Korea appeared to be collapsing from within.