How to Deal With North Korea

James T. Laney and Jason T. Shaplen

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2003

Summary:  Pyongyang's belligerent behavior should not obscure other dramatic conciliatory steps North Korea has taken in recent years--steps suggesting that, even now, a solution lies within reach. The trick is to craft a plan that does not reward the North for its misdeeds. In such a plan, all major outside powers should guarantee the security of the entire Korean Peninsula first. This will remove Pyongyang's excuse for nuclear proliferation--and break the deadlock on the world's last Cold War frontier.

James T. Laney is President Emeritus of Emory University and Co-Chairman of an independent task force on "Managing Change on the Korean Peninsula," sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from 1993 to 1997. Jason T. Shaplen was Policy Adviser at the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) from 1995 to 1999 and is a member of the task force.

1 The 1994 Agreed Framework called for best efforts to be made to deliver two light-water reactors to North Korea: one in 2003 and one in 2004. Even before the North admitted to having an HEU program -- which has cast the future of the Agreed Framework into doubt -- it had become unlikely that the first light-water reactor would be completed before 2008 or the second before 2009. To be fair, however, responsibility for the delay is borne by both sides, and primarily by the North, since it has frequently been intransigent on practical issues related to the agreement's implementation.

2 The visit of the surviving abductees to Japan in October was originally scheduled to last two weeks. After the North acknowledged its HEU program, Japan refused to allow their return and pressed for their North Korean relatives to be allowed to join them. Interestingly, although the dispute remains unresolved, Tokyo and Pyongyang have opted to handle it quietly -- even as Japan has made clear that future progress with the North is tied to this issue.

3 In U.S. dollar terms these figures equal a 1994 GDP of $404 billion (using the 1994 exchange rate of 800 won to the dollar) and a 2001 GDP of $422 billion (using today's much lower exchange rate of 1,290 won to the dollar).

4 Had the Agreed Framework not been signed in 1994, the North's plutonium-based program would by today have produced enough plutonium for up to 30 nuclear weapons. Critics of the accord should not ignore this fact.