The North Korean Nuclear Program

Security, Strategy and New Perspectives from Russia

James Moltz Clay,Alexandre Y. Mansourov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1999
• ISBN:
  9781136749919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

The contributors discuss Soviet-North Korean nuclear relations, economic and military aspects of the nuclear programme, the nuclear energy sector, North Korea's negotiations with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, co-operative security, and US policy. Focusing on North Korean attitudes and perspectives, the text also includes Rus

1

Russia, North Korea, and U.S. Policy toward the Nuclear Crisis

James Clay Moltz

Since the North Korean nuclear crisis first erupted on the international stage with the March 1993 North Korean announcement that it was withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Western analysts have been trying to crack into the black box of North Korean decision making and understand its perspectives on nuclear technology. Ironically, however, at the very same time that the United States was trying to learn more about North Korea, the single best source of information on this highly secretive communist recluse—Russia—was being held at arm's length by Western negotiators. Indeed, the eventual signing of the October 1994 Agreed Framework between Pyongyang and Washington froze out the Russians from their previous position in North Korea, causing considerable frustration and irritation in Moscow. How-ever, as time has passed, it has become clear that the United States still knows very little and perhaps understands even less about the forces that propelled Pyongyang to pursue a nuclear weapon and to risk alienating itself on the world scene even further by threatening to withdraw from the NPT.

The purpose of this book is to fill this knowledge gap, by drawing on the one source of information that is both the most rich historically and the most neglected of late: Russian experts who have lived in, worked in, or studied North Korea. This collection of specially commissioned papers represents the first Western publication to draw on the unique source of personal recollections, interview data, and archival information compiled by Russian experts on North Korea. Few Western experts can claim any experiences in the Democratic 's Republic of Korea that even begin to approximate this level of expertise. This book should therefore provide a wealth of information for scholars, journalists, and government officials that has never before been available.

In the rest of this chapter, I first discuss other recent books on the North Korean nuclear program. Overall, these books have provided considerable new information on Western (and particularly South Korean, Japanese, and U.S.) perspectives and decision making on the crisis, which culminated in the October 1994 Agreed Framework and the 1995 formation of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) in New York, in charge of building the two light-water reactors in North Korea. However, these books have not provided a great deal of insight into North Korean perspectives, strategy, and thinking about its nuclear relations with the West. In fairness, it is very difficult for Western observers to enter the North Korean mindset and understand the complex political, historical, and social constraints that shape leadership thinking on these issues. The authors of the present book are in a far better position to under-stand these factors, having been raised within the Soviet Union under similar constraints and often having spent many years within North Korea itself, exposed to the daily propaganda, regimentation of life, distrust of the West, and deprivation from outside sources of information. Thus, these authors are able to shed light on following questions: How does North Korean nuclear strategy fit within the dominant juch'e (self-reliance) ideology in Pyongyang? How does the regime differ from the " rational actor" model Western social scientists and policy analysts are familiar with? Within this North Korean " worldview," what is the role of the nuclear program in its relations with the West, and how is the program likely to be used in the future to shape (or leverage) those relations?

Given the recent East Asian economic crisis, pressure on the Agreed Frame-work is increasing, as funds for its implementation are becoming hard to come by Indeed, it remains a serious question whether the unique experiment in collective security that KEDO and the Agreed Framework represent will ultimately fulfill its original functions, or whether the terms of the deal will have to be adjusted, with unpredictable and possibly dangerous consequences in Pyongyang. In the recent past, North Korea has threatened to restart its nuclear reactor and has engaged in a number of provocative missile sales that are likely to further jeopardize its relationship with the West. At the same time, it has blamed these actions on the slowness of the West to implement elements of the fuel oil deal that was part of the Agreed Framework, thus providing KEDO with at least a plausible means of remedying the situation and putting the responsibility for current problems in the relationship back in Pyongyang's court.

After a brief review of the recent literature on North Korea, showing what arguments have been made by some recent books on the nuclear crisis and what their studies add to our general knowledge of the problems at hand, this chapter offers a substantive overview of the structure and main arguments presented in the book, highlighting new information uncovered by its Russian authors as well as the unique sources they have drawn upon. The chapter concludes with some tentative speculations about current trends in the implementation of the Agreed Framework and the future course of international negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program. These can be viewed by the reader as themes to consider throughout the book and to apply to remaining questions facing decision makers today. Since 1993, Pyongyang has remained in formal violation of its nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Therefore, even if the current crisis in the international settlement over the reactor deal is solved, future nuclear developments and the unaccounted nuclear material will remain a matter of ongoing concern for some time to come.

Existing Studies of the North Korean Nuclear Program

Among recent studies of the diplomacy surrounding the North Korean nuclear crisis, several books stand out for contributing new information and insights into various aspects of the Agreed Framework and the cooperative efforts to freeze North Koreas nuclear program. Perhaps the most detailed account of these events from a U.S. perspective is that of former New York Times's editorial board member Leon V. Sigal, whose book Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton University Press, 1997) offers considerable new information not found in the press about the various actors on the U.S. side, including those outside of the government. He discusses, for example, the early North Korean contacts of individuals like University of California at Berkeley Professor Robert Scalapino, Nautilus Institute director and Australian analyst Peter Hayes, former Asia Society specialist Tony Namkung, and the Carnegie Endowment's Selig Harrison. He also provides fascinating details on the role of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and W. Alton Jones Foundation in providing funding for these early ventures. He further delineates the Rockefeller Foundation's role in facilitating the visit in June 1994 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to speak with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. This visit ultimately broke the stalemate in the nuclear negotiations by turning Pyongyang's attention to the positive effects of cooperation with the West, rather than on the sanctions that would be continued if he maintained a hard line. Sigal focuses his attention on the various governmental and nongovernmental efforts that led to the creation of the Agreed Framework and KEDO, noting that cooperative disarmament " is much less costly than coercion, and it works."¹

The contribution of Michael J. Mazarr's recent book, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation (St. Martin's Press, 1995), is precisely the focus he places on the relationship of the crisis to the broader nonproliferation . While not as detailed as Sigal's book on some of the background factors in the evolving U.S. position, Mazarr covers the politics well and highlights the significance (and problems) of the eventual settlement both in terms of U.S. security and nonproliferation goals. Even from the perspective of 1995, Mazarr is more skeptical than Sigal of the value of the Agreed Framework, noting the risks of a flare-up of the nuclear crisis and his view that the deal eventually may dissolve. Thus, his prescription for ending the crisis involves " a rapid move to enmesh North Korea in a web of economic and political contacts."² However, North Koreas own behavior since 1995—in the continued stoking of tensions with South Korea—have helped put off this broader rapprochement by hardening existing opponents of such a warming in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington. Similarly, North Koreas alleged exports of missile technologies to Pakistan and perhaps Iran have caused new concerns, even among supporters of a rapprochement, about Pyongyang's willingness to " behave" according to norms acceptable to the United States. Thus, despite the fact that the Agreed Framework is now teetering on the brink of collapse due to lack of funding and waning political sup-port in the various KEDO capitals, none of Mazarr's larger web of suggested contacts with the North have been implemented. If Mazarr were writing today, he would be certainly express concern about the failure of diplomacy to move beyond the 1994 agreements.

While the two books already mentioned focus largely on the U.S. decision-making context, a third recent book of note—journalist Don Oberdorfer's The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Addison-Wesley, 1997)—provides a useful regional context to the North Korean nuclear crisis. Oberdorfer's history, which concludes with a long section on the Agreed Framework, provides considerable useful details on the tensions, conflicts, and failed diplomatic efforts that preceded the nuclear crisis of the early 1990s. Oberdorfer concludes by reiterating the importance of Korea, indeed its centrality, to hopes of long-term peace and stability in East Asia. But he notes that the United States is perhaps no longer in a position to affect its fate, citing the " gradual reduction of its leverage" and " the absence of clear U.S. goals."³ Unfortunately, the economic news of late 1997 and 1998 did not improve the hopes of dynamic leadership and new diplomacy emerging from within East Asia itself, suggesting that further tensions may still be in store for the Korean Peninsula.

While a number of other books have been published on the more general topic of Northeast Asia and security in the two Koreas,⁴ few have provided the level of detail offered by Sigal, Mazarr, and Oberdorfer on questions of relevance to the present volume. Yet, despite the significant contributions of these studies, the present book offers a focus and level of detail not possible without truly inside knowledge of North Korean politics, economics, and security. This is the knowledge that former Soviet and now Russian analysts and government officials can . Thus, this book seeks to add to this existing literature by providing new information to illuminate previous " black holes" in the North Korean debate. Short of an eventual opening of North Korean society, which is likely to take a considerable number of years, Russian experts are likely to remain the most informed experts on the North Korean situation for some time to come.

Contributions to the Present Volume

The book's twenty chapters are divided into five parts: Part I (The History of the North Korean Nuclear Program); Part II (The Economic Context of the North Korean Nuclear Program); Part III (Political and Military Factors behind the North Korean Nuclear Program); Part IV (The International Context of the North Korean Nuclear Program); and Part V (Unsettled Problems and Future Issues). The aim of the book is to provide a well-rounded analysis of both the history and current developments in North Korea regarding the nuclear program and the broader crisis it has set off in Northeast Asia. Included in the history is information from previously unpublished Russian Foreign Ministry archives and from the files of the Ministry of Atomic Energy. These and other chapters also draw on in-depth personal knowledge of individuals and issues in North Korea. Similarly, the chapters on current developments draw considerably on interviews with North Korean and senior Russian officials, providing new information and perspectives on previously " closed" topics, including the role of the North Korean military, economic conditions, details of North Korea's relations with its neighbors, and current political developments in North Koreas inner circles. The chapters on KEDO draw upon in-depth interviews by U.S.-based author Alexandre Mansourov with KEDO and U.S. officials containing considerable unpublished information.

Part I of the book covers in careful detail the history of the North Korean nuclear program. It consists of three chapters written by experienced experts on the North Korean nuclear scene. Chapter 2, written by Georgiy Kaurov, a leading Soviet official who worked formerly at the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, provides the most concise and detailed description available to date of Soviet-North Korean nuclear cooperation, beginning with joint mining activities in the 1940s, to the training program set up at the Soviets’ Dubna facility in the 1950s, to the provision of a research reactor in the early 1960s, to the Soviet decision to provide a major power reactor in 1985, to the virtual cancellation of cooperative projects in the early 1990s due to funding problems. Dr. Kaurov's detailed recounting of this relationship provides, for the first time, actual figures for the value of Soviet technological assistance provided during those years and its contribution to the upgrading of North Korean technical capabilities. He concludes with some suggestions on how Russia might be brought into a new nuclear construction program to assist North Korea, should the KEDO organization fail. Dr. Kaurov's perspective is clearly supportive of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy's generally negative view of KEDO, it does offer an alternative means for completing an international project aimed at increasing North Korea's electrical capacity.

In Chapter 3, current Russian Ambassador to North Korea, Valery Denisov— a highly experienced diplomat with several prior tours of duty in Pyongyang— provides a review of the structure of North Koreas nuclear organization and decision making, as well as a discussion of the broader political and developmental goals of the program. His chapter offers a unique insight into organizations not well known, much less analyzed, in the United States. Ambassador Denisov's account draws on his more than a decade of work in Pyongyang and his lifetime of contacts with North Korean and Soviet/Russian officials working on cooperative projects between the two countries.

Chapter 4, written by former Izvestiya journalist Alexander Zhebin, traces the history of Soviet-North Korean nuclear cooperation from its political context. He examines Soviet motives in providing this assistance as well as North Korea's often quite different goals in receiving and applying it for particular national aims. Zhebin's expert analysis of North Korean strategy draws on his many years of reporting in Pyongyang and his intimate knowledge of North Korean officials, their thought processes, and their style of behavior. In addition, Zhebin's account is filled with rare interview information from Soviet military and intelligence officials with access to classified Soviet documents on the North Korean bomb pro-gram. He concludes that North Korea may have deployed a single nuclear device, or certainly may have come very close. However, he rejects the notion that Soviet scientists assisted in these programs in any way, noting that many key facilities (according to his interviews) were located in secret mountainous sites, which no foreigners (including Russians) had access to.

In Part II, the analysis turns to the economic side of the equation. In Chapter 5, well-known Russian economist Vladimir Andrianov analyzes some of the serious gaps in the North Korean economy, and how Pyongyang vainly hoped to use military means—both nuclear and missile—to make up for its many weaknesses compared with South Korea. He also considers how North Korea's economic problems provided an underlying rationale for the risky policy of nuclear confrontation with the West, as Pyongyang sought to negotiate economic concessions from the United States, Japan, and South Korea, as well as international aid agencies, by using the threat of nuclear weapons. In Chapter 6, Valentin Moiseyev, former head of Korean policy in the Russian Foreign Ministry, provides an extremely detailed history of the North Korean electric power section, tracing the development of hydroelectric plants as well as the failure of North Korea to develop quickly enough to keep up with electricity demand. He highlights gaps in fossil fuel supplies and the decision by Pyongyang in the early 1980s to turn toward nuclear power as a long-term energy solution. These points raise a still-puzzling question for analysts of the nuclear weapons program: Was North Koreas move toward an expanded nuclear program driven mainly by its energy needs or by the perceived security threats it faced?

Chapter 7, by Natalya Bazhanova of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, provides a broader picture of the North Korean economic scene by analyzing the structural problems in the existing system and the country's failure to introduce adequate incentives into the workplace. Dr. Bazhanova also traces the nearly total reliance of the country on foreign trade, despite the edicts of Kim Il Sung's juch'e ideology.

However, as much as the North Korean system can be blamed for the country's current economic difficulties, any balanced analysis of existing conditions has to take into account the disastrous economic impacts of the flood of 1995 and the drought of 1996. These twin catastrophes, coming in successive years, greatly exacerbated Pyongyang's already considerable economic dilemmas: dealing with a loss of foreign trade and investment capital from Russia and a concomitant energy crisis these losses caused for domestic industry. As pointed out by Alexandre Y. Mansourov, now a fellow at Harvard University's Korean Institute and previously a young Soviet diplomat in Pyongyang, these natural disasters crushed any hopes of near-term recovery in North Korea and forced it to rely on a risky policy (short of conducting broad-reaching economic reforms) of military threats followed by appeals for foreign aid.

Part III of the book moves from these economic factors to an analysis of the contributing political and military factors that led North Korea to engage in nuclear weapons research. In Chapter 9, Russian journalist Alexander Platkovskiy (formerly the Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent in Pyongyang) traces an ironic and contradictory past in North Korean politics. In 1989, heir apparent Kim Jong Il sponsored a Youth Festival in Pyongyang to raise his profile, which resulted in the first meetings between North Korean and foreign youths and the sowing of new ideas on the possibility of political reforms in the North. But the rapid collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989 and then in the Soviet Union in 1991 caused the regime to squelch all plans for reform and embark instead on a harder political line at home, while using an elevated foreign threat and its nuclear diplomacy to ma...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Russia, North Korea, and U.S. Policy toward the Nuclear Crisis
• Part I The History of the North Korean Nuclear Program
• Part II The Economic Context of the North Korean Nuclear Program
• Part III Political and Military Factors behind the North Korean Nuclear Program
• Part IV The International Context of the North Korean Nuclear Program
• Part V Unsettled Problems and Future Issues
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index