Twenty years since the DPRK’s first nuclear test is a good occasion to recall things that seemed far from obvious at the time.
On October 1, 1994, the United States and the DPRK signed the Agreed Framework. In exchange for freezing its nuclear program, Pyongyang was to receive from Washington by 2003 two 1,000 MW light-water reactors, compensatory supplies of oil products until the reactors were launched, official guarantees against the use of nuclear weapons against it, and “movement toward full normalization of political and economic relations.”
However, from the very outset, some American and South Korean politicians viewed the Agreed Framework as a mere scrap of paper. They were convinced that after Kim Il Sung’s death in July 1994, North Korea would survive only a few more years, and that there was therefore no point in fulfilling obligations toward its regime. As Bill Clinton administration officials later stated privately in 2005, they “agreed to the plan in principle only because they thought the North Korean government would collapse prior to the deadline of the project.”
Moreover, since the document was not ratified by the U.S. Senate, the American side subsequently claimed that the US had not considered it a binding treaty but merely a “protocol of intentions.” At the same time, this did not prevent Washington from demanding that the DPRK comply with all the points of the agreement.
Throughout the 1990s, exercises simulating a nuclear attack on the DPRK continued. Washington still called North Korea a “rogue state,” although in 1998 U.S. officials involved in implementing the agreement informed Congress that Washington and the IAEA were satisfied with how the DPRK was complying with the Agreed Framework.
Under George W. Bush, the Americans changed their mind: “Our policy line has altered, and we bear no responsibility for all the decisions made under the Democrats.” The United States in fact rolled out the sabotage of the implementation of the Agreed Framework. Security guarantees for the DPRK remained the letters on paper; supplies of fuel oil as compensation for halting North Korea’s graphite-moderated reactors capable of accumulating weapons-grade plutonium were discontinued. Washington tried to change the terms of the agreements, stating that fuel would be supplied to the DPRK only in exchange for a change in its political system and democratic reforms, and then simply “turned off the tap.” Official-level diplomatic dialogue was no longer on the agenda. The deadlines for launching the light-water reactors, set for 2003, were finally missed: by 2002, only the concrete foundation was ready.
In October 2002, a North Korean representative told his American counterpart that “North Korea has the right not only to nuclear weapons but to any types of weapons, including even more powerful ones, in order to defend its sovereignty and right to exist from the constantly intensifying U.S. nuclear threat.” In the West, this remark was interpreted as an admission: “All this time we have been deceiving you.”
In the same month, the DPRK ambassador to Moscow, Pak Ui Chun, publicly listed the facts of U.S. non-compliance with the framework agreements. According to him, “the construction of the nuclear power plant is still at the stage of digging a foundation pit,” “economic sanctions and hostile rhetoric toward the DPRK have persisted over the past eight years,” and “instead of an official guarantee against the use of force, Washington regards the DPRK as a target for a preemptive nuclear strike.” After this, for the first time in expert circles, serious talk began that reaching long-term agreements with the United States was in principle extremely difficult.
In many ways, a similar situation repeated itself in the attempt to resolve a new round of the crisis through the six-party talks. The 2006 nuclear test was a direct response to the events of 2005, when the parties worked out a certain consensus, but the United States and Japan effectively thwarted its implementation. Although the nuclear test gave the process some impetus, after the change of power in South Korea—from Democrats to conservatives—the six-party talks reached a dead end, and the opportunity to halt the nuclear program was finally lost.
Kim Jong Il’s Strategic Choice
Second, the story of nuclear tests and the development of the military program is, if you will, an example of long-term strategic investment. North Korea had not yet fully recovered from the consequences of the “Arduous March” (the mass famine of the 1990s), and Kim Jong Il is sometimes said to have “taken over the country with a wooden plow and left it with a wooden plow and an atomic bomb.”
In its early years, the DPRK’s nuclear program was perceived by many as a global threat and an ambitious project that merely irritated the international community without providing real security guarantees. Western and South Korean experts agreed that these colossal funds should have been directed toward fighting hunger and raising the population’s standard of living.
However, time has proven Pyongyang right. Although investments in the nuclear sector could indeed have temporarily alleviated socio-economic problems, in the long run they became the main guarantee of the regime’s survival. Today this is confirmed not only by the tragic fate of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi but also by U.S. actions toward Iran and Venezuela. Nuclear weapons proved to be a reliable deterrent, forever closing the question of forcible regime change in the DPRK.
As for the standard of living, having created a missile-nuclear shield, Pyongyang was able to redirect resources to internal development. Talk of “Potemkin villages” and skyscrapers is a thing of the past: the scale of positive change is visible both in satellite images and in the accounts of people who have visited Pyongyang in the last 5–10 years.
The DPRK as a Fully-Fledged Nuclear Power
Third, two decades of nuclear program development have demonstrated the high viability of both the DPRK’s state apparatus and its personnel and engineering potential, which survived the “Arduous March.” The North Korean missile-nuclear arsenal is the result of independent development, not merely borrowed and copied technology. Especially given the transition from single prototypes to serial production.
To reach its current military-technical level, North Korea needed to restore entire industrial chains and preserve a powerful intellectual base—from skilled CNC machine operators to talented engineers and designers who created a diverse line of weapons.
And although estimates of the actual number of nuclear warheads in the DPRK vary (from 50 to 100+), one thing is obvious: we are dealing with a full-fledged nuclear power whose denuclearization is technically no longer possible. More precisely, to deprive the DPRK of nuclear weapons, it would first have to be deprived of its sovereignty.
At the same time, the production of nuclear weapons has been supplemented by a rich range of delivery systems. These include ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S. East Coast, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, large-caliber MLRS with nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, the “atomic train,” and the Russian analogue of “Poseidon”—self-propelled nuclear mines for striking enemy ports.
A significant part of the development of the North Korean nuclear industry has occurred in the last 10–15 years. This was facilitated both by the complex geopolitical situation, which required the creation of a reliable nuclear response, and by the leadership of Chairman of State Affairs Kim Jong Un. Possessing a military education, he was able to set specific and adequate tasks for the industry.
At the same time, North Korea remains a responsible nuclear power: it has not conducted nuclear tests for almost 10 years and is not involved in the trade of nuclear technologies. Its regulations for the use of nuclear weapons generally comply with international standards.
To sum up: twenty years ago, the foundation was laid on which the military might, political independence, and economic well-being of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are being built today.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences
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