For Immediate Release: October 31, 2000
Press Release
Remarks by David Albright
Remarks by Kevin O'Neill, ISIS Deputy Director, at the release of "Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle"
I would like to discuss ISIS's roles in addressing nuclear proliferation by North Korea and how these roles emerge in Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle:
We have been following nuclear developments on the Korean peninsula for the past fifteen years--a time period that stretches back before ISIS was founded as an independent organization.
For much of that time, we have acted as an information provider by assessing North Korean nuclear developments. This role, which we continue to play, evolved in the early 1990s to one of a watchdog. Increasingly, we grew concerned as worst-case assessments about North Korean nuclear activities began to factor prominently in the public debate and in policymaking. The key issue we addressed at that time was whether North Korea already had a nuclear arsenal, and if so, how large that arsenal was.
Today, we continue in the role of a watchdog, and while questions about a potential North Korean nuclear arsenal are still posed, another issue dominates the debate: namely, is the Agreed Framework beneficial or detrimental to U.S. national security?
We believe that the Agreed Framework has been beneficial. First and foremost, it has prevented North Korea from assembling one of the largest nuclear arsenals in existence outside the five recognized nuclear weapon states. Absent the Agreed Framework, North Korea today could be producing more than 50 nuclear explosives per year, and could already have enough plutonium for 60-80 nuclear weapons. This is a fact that critics of the Agreed Framework either don't understand or choose to ignore. A main theme of our book, therefore, is that North Korea's indigenous nuclear program should not be taken lightly.
If I may briefly quote from the book's preface:
"The Agreed Framework has frozen North Korea's known nuclear program, and thus prevented North Korea from acquiring a large supply of separated plutonium. In this way, the Agreed Framework has enabled the United States and its allies to avoid costly military steps that would be necessary if North Korea were expanding its nuclear arsenal. It has provided breathing space to improve the overall relationship through diplomatic engagement."
This "breathing space" is a second key achievement of the Agreed Framework. The June North-South summit between President Kim Dae Jung and Chairman Kim Jong il, the recent visit by North Korean First Vice Chairman Jo to Washington D.C., Secretary Albright's visit last week to North Korea--none of these events could have happened without the Agreed Framework in place.
The second role that Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle plays is to provide the public and decision makers with details of the crisis in the early 1990s that led up to the Agreed Framework. Many of the same issues that almost led us to war in 1994--particularly disputes over the size of North Korea's plutonium stock--need to be resolved in the coming years. The public deserves an honest, independent record of that dispute, and we hope that our book sheds light on some of the key issues and events from that time.
A third role that Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle plays is to keep the issue of nuclear proliferation on the radar screen. As David Albright has just discussed, the book sets out an agenda of concrete steps that need to be taken to make North Korea more transparent. In preparing this book over the past several years, we have come to understand that governments and the public have become somewhat complacent about what it will take to fully implement the Agreed Framework. The sense of urgency about resolving nuclear proliferation has diminished, and attention has increasingly been paid to other national security issues involving North Korea. In fact, it will be much more difficult--if not impossible--to resolve many of these other issues unless the question of nuclear proliferation by North Korea is satisfactorily answered.
How does Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle weave these themes together? Organizationally, the book is divided into four main sections, plus a set of appendices.
Section one of the book provides an overview of the developments leading up to the Agreed Framework, and discusses its implementation through mid-2000. The section also includes a chapter that uses satellite imagery to provide a visual tour of North Korea's key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, thereby making the issue more tangible to the reader.
The second section of the book includes more technical chapters that discuss the dispute over North Korea's nuclear activities. In particular, the book sheds new light on the interaction between North Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1992-1993, which led to an international crisis and threats of war. The section also includes a chapter that addresses North Korea's plutonium stock.
Section three discusses many of the challenges that the next U.S. President will have to face as the new administration addresses North Korean nuclear proliferation, given the legacy of the Agreed Framework. This section includes chapters by three outside authors that evaluate progress made to date and suggest ways to move forward.
The fourth section examines the historic June 2000 summit between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong il and its implications for the Agreed Framework. The section also summarizes our main conclusions about what needs to be done.
Finally, the book includes a valuable set of appendices that we believe will be useful to the reader.
To conclude my remarks, Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle intends to address and evaluate the efforts by the United States to cap North Korea's nuclear weapons program and ensure that the Korean peninsula is free of nuclear weapons. In so doing, it presents fact-based information and analysis that practitioners and observers of nonproliferation policy--including government policy-makers, the media, independent experts, and members of the academic community--will find useful and informative.