VII.

History

For the history of the Korea Peninsula before it was partitioned in 1945 into North and South Korea, see Korea. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was proclaimed in P’yŏngyang, the capital, on September 9, 1948, but a more significant date of inception would perhaps be August 29, 1946, when the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) was inaugurated under the leadership of Kim Tubong and Kim Il Sung.

A.

Kim Il Sung’s Rise to Power

After the establishment of the KWP, Kim Il Sung enjoyed the support of the occupying Soviet forces (until most of them withdrew in late 1948), and began playing a leading role in Korean affairs north of the 38th parallel. Under the Workers’ Party leadership and before the establishment of the DPRK, key political and economic changes had already been made. These included egalitarian land reforms that won the support of landless labor and tenant farmers, elimination of moderate and right-wing elements, suppression of religious groups, confiscation of land and wealth formerly belonging to the Japanese or to enemies of the regime, and the initiation of party-directed economic planning and development.

Kim Il Sung emerged early as the principal leader, supported by former officers of his guerrilla forces who had fought against Japanese colonial rule from bases in Manchuria. In 1949 border fighting broke out between the North and the South. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the dividing line and invaded the South. Soon, in defense of the South, the United States joined the fighting under the banner of the United Nations (UN), along with small contingents of British, Canadian, Australian, and Turkish troops. In October 1950 China joined the war on the North’s side. By the time a cease-fire agreement was signed on July 27, 1953, some 800,000 Koreans on both sides of the 38th parallel had lost their lives, together with 115,000 Chinese and about 36,400 U.S. military personnel. See also Korean War.

B.

The Post-Korean War Period

The war caused enormous damage to North Korea. North Korea endured three years of heavy U.S. bombing in addition to a ground offensive by UN forces along the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. Virtually the entire population of North Korea lived and worked in manmade underground caves for three years to escape the relentless attack of U.S. planes. Schools, hospitals, factories, and troop barracks were located in the caves. P’yŏngyang was bombed until almost no buildings were left standing, and an entirely new capital had to be rebuilt after the war.

KWP discipline and forced-labor policies resulted in considerable recovery and development by 1960. At the same time, the North Korean leadership began to turn away from Soviet tutelage, emphasizing the national character of the Korean revolution. As the quarrel between China and the USSR intensified, North Korea maneuvered for even more independence of action. During the 1960s heavy industrial growth was emphasized, but the production of consumer goods and the general standard of living lagged. Late in the 1960s, North Korea developed an especially aggressive stance toward the South: An assassination team tried and nearly succeeded in killing South Korea’s president, Park Chung Hee. In 1968 the Pueblo, a United States intelligence-gathering vessel, was seized by North Korean gunboats and its crew held in extremely severe circumstances for a year. Guerrilla raids were launched on the South, but without much effect. A U.S. reconnaissance plane was shot down in April 1969. These events, rather than weakening the South, stimulated renewed defense measures and were probably counterproductive. They also influenced the formation of a harder political order in South Korea.

In the 1970s, secret talks with southern officials led to a joint declaration (July 4, 1972) that both sides would seek to develop a dialogue aimed at unification, but by spring 1973 this effort had dissolved in acrimony. Sporadic exchanges on unification took place throughout the 1980s.

At the KWP Congress in 1980, Kim Il Sung’s son, Kim Jong Il, was given high ranking in the Politburo and on the Central Committee of the party, placing him in a commanding position to succeed his father. Kim Il Sung was reelected president in May 1990 for a four-year term. In 1991 both North and South Korea joined the United Nations (UN), and the two nations signed accords regarding nuclear and conventional arms control and reconciliation.

In 1992 North Korea signed a pact with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to allow the country’s nuclear facilities to be inspected. However, in 1993 the North Korean government refused to let inspectors examine nuclear waste sites believed to contain undeclared nuclear material that could be used for nuclear weapons. North Korea also suspended its formal acceptance of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which it had signed in 1985. In December 1993 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced that North Korea had most likely built at least one atomic weapon from plutonium extracted from fuel rods at a nuclear power plant. See also Arms Control; Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

Throughout the first half of 1994, the North Korean government continued to resist a full IAEA inspection of suspected nuclear sites. The crisis was defused in June, however, when former U.S. president Jimmy Carter met with Kim Il Sung in North Korea. The following month Kim died unexpectedly. Nevertheless, the United States and North Korea reached an agreement in 1994 known as the Agreed Framework, in which North Korea agreed to suspend the operation of designated nuclear facilities capable of producing and reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea also agreed to allow IAEA inspections to verify the suspension.

In return, the United States, Japan, and South Korea agreed to construct two new reactors of a type not suitable for nuclear weapons production. The agreement called for annual deliveries of heavy fuel oil to North Korea as well as U.S. steps to end economic sanctions against North Korea that had been in place since the Korean War. The agreement also envisaged steps leading to the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and North Korea. North Korea agreed to dismantle the nuclear facilities suspended under the agreement, coincident with the completion of the two new reactors and with U.S. fulfillment of other provisions of the agreement.

Construction of the two reactors began in 1995 but stopped when the United States abrogated the 1994 agreement in December 2002, charging that North Korea had violated the accord by initiating a secret weapons-grade uranium-enrichment program. An American official who visited P’yŏngyang said that North Korea had admitted its guilt; North Korea denied that it did so and denied that it had such a program.

Meanwhile, a nationwide food crisis that surfaced in 1995 became a widespread famine by 1996. Factors contributing to the crisis included the withdrawal of food subsidies from Russia and China in the early 1990s, the cumulative effect of government agricultural policies, and a series of severe floods and droughts that damaged agricultural crops. International humanitarian relief agencies responded to the crisis with ongoing food aid and other relief efforts. Nevertheless, it was estimated that up to 1 million people had died of starvation and famine-related illnesses by 1998. North Korea’s official estimate was 200,000. Although the famine peaked in 1997, the food crisis continued into the early 2000s.

In September 1998 North Korea revised its constitution to recognize the chair of the National Defense Commission, a position held by Kim Jong Il, as the country’s top government post. Kim had been the de facto leader of North Korea since the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994.

C.

North Korea in the 21st Century

In June 2000 Kim Jong Il and South Korean president Kim Dae Jung held talks in P’yŏngyang and agreed to promote reconciliation and economic cooperation between the two countries. The landmark event was the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of North Korea and South Korea since the division of Korea in 1945. The thaw in relations led to the first officially sanctioned temporary reunions of families separated by the Korean War. It also increased trade and investment, relaxed military tensions, and partially reopened road and rail links that had been severed by the creation of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the buffer zone created between the two Koreas after the Korean War. In May 2007, for the first time since the Korean War started in 1950, two passenger trains traveled between North and South Korea. But the one-time event was regarded as largely symbolic of improved relations, rather than a serious effort to renew passenger rail links.

In contrast to the growing détente between North Korea and South Korea, relations between the United States and North Korea reached an impasse as the 21st century began, due to tensions over the nuclear issue. China attempted to defuse the crisis by acting as a mediator between North Korea and the United States, which had placed North Korea on a list of countries supporting terrorism and had characterized North Korea as being part of an “axis of evil” in a 2002 State of the Union speech by President George W. Bush. North Korea sought direct talks with the United States, but the United States refused to meet in one-on-one negotiations. China fashioned a compromise in which negotiations would take place among six concerned nations—China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States. In August 2003, February and June 2004, and July and August 2005, the six-nation talks were held in Beijing, China’s capital.

In a formal proposal presented to North Korea in June 2004 in Beijing and reaffirmed in the 2005 talks, the United States outlined a six-stage denuclearization process. North Korea would be required at the outset to acknowledge that a weapons-grade uranium-enrichment program existed and to make specific commitments providing for its elimination in a denuclearization agreement. The U.S. proposal called for North Korea to make a commitment to dismantle all of its nuclear programs at the outset of the denuclearization process and offered to discuss economic aid after such a commitment had been made and the actual dismantling process was under way.

Even after the dismantlement of these nuclear programs, however, a “wholly transformed relationship with the United States” would follow only if North Korea changed “its behavior on human rights,” addressed the “issues underlying” its inclusion on the terrorist list, eliminated chemical and biological weapons programs, put an end to the proliferation of missiles and missile-related technology, and adopted a “less provocative conventional force disposition.”

North Korea rejected the U.S. proposal, calling for a U.S. commitment to normalize economic and diplomatic relations in exchange for a North Korean dismantlement pledge and a step-by-step denuclearization process. In this process U.S. steps toward normalized relations and economic aid for North Korea would be linked with parallel North Korean steps toward dismantlement. North Korea also offered to negotiate a new agreement with the United States to freeze the production of plutonium. In February 2005 North Korea announced that it had become a nuclear weapons state, declaring that nuclear weapons were necessary to deter what it perceived as a U.S. policy of “regime change” in North Korea. North Korea had not tested a nuclear weapon.

The fourth round of the six-party talks recessed in early August 2005 without an agreement. However, in September 2005 the United States and North Korea held bilateral meetings in Beijing, China’s capital, for 13 days, leading to the resumption of the six-party negotiations. The fourth round culminated in the adoption of a major declaration on September 19, 2005, in which North Korea pledged to “abandon” all nuclear weapons and nuclear programs in a step-by-step process linked to economic aid, security guarantees, and the normalization of relations with the United States.

Soon after, the United States initiated financial sanctions against North Korea. Invoking the Patriot Act, the U.S. Treasury Department obtained the cooperation of China in freezing North Korean accounts in a Macao bank, accusing North Korea of counterfeiting U.S. currency. At the same time, the Treasury Department initiated broader efforts to persuade banks throughout the world to shun all North Korea-related accounts or transactions as possible conduits for trade relating to weapons of mass destruction. North Korea charged that the sanctions were a violation of Article Two of the September 19 agreement, in which the United States pledged to normalize relations. North Korea refused to return to the six-party negotiations and called for the United States to engage in preliminary bilateral talks on the financial sanctions issue prior to reconvening the six-party talks.

Then tensions in the region soared in early July 2006 when North Korea launched seven test missiles, one of them a long-range Taepodong-2 missile, which fell into the Sea of Japan (East Sea). International military observers judged the test-launches as unsuccessful but the concerned international community, via the UN Security Council, led the call for economic sanctions against North Korea.

D.

North Korea Becomes a Nuclear Weapons Nation

Then in early October 2006 North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in an underground explosion. United States intelligence agencies, after testing air samples for radiation and measuring seismic readings, concluded that North Korea had tested a plutonium bomb with an explosive force of less than 1 kiloton of TNT. By contrast, the plutonium bomb that the United States dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, had an explosive force of 20 kilotons of TNT. Some nuclear weapons experts suggested that the small size of the explosion indicated that North Korean scientists and engineers may have encountered problems in imploding the device. Nevertheless, North Korea became the eighth country in the world known to have tested a nuclear weapon. United States intelligence experts estimated that North Korea had an arsenal of six to nine nuclear weapons. See also Nuclear Weapon; Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

In response to the test the UN Security Council unanimously voted to impose financial and weapons sanctions on North Korea for a “clear threat to international peace and security.” The resolution called upon “all nations to take cooperative action, including through the inspection of cargo, in accordance with their respective national laws,” to prohibit the delivery of any materials related to weapons of mass destruction. It also banned trade with North Korea in heavy conventional weapons and luxury goods, and it called on nations to freeze funds connected with North Korea’s nonconventional arms programs. However, the resolution left member states free to decide how to implement its provisions, and it was not expected to lead to the interdiction of North Korean ships at sea or to the imposition of a quarantine or embargo on North Korea.

North Korea reacted angrily to the UN Security Council resolution, calling it a “declaration of war.” While calling for stiff sanctions against North Korea, U.S. president Bush said the United States had “no intention of attacking” North Korea. Bush added, however, that the United States reserved the right to consider “all options to defend our friends in the region,” a reference to Japan and South Korea, U.S. allies that are nonnuclear weapons states. UN secretary general Kofi Annan called on the United States to conduct bilateral talks with North Korea, but the official U.S. position remained that it would only engage in multilateral negotiations.

In a series of trilateral (U.S.-China-North Korea) and bilateral (U.S.-North Korea) meetings on October 31, 2006, in Beijing, North Korea agreed to return to the six-party talks in exchange for a U.S. agreement to seek a solution of the Macao bank dispute and the issue of global banking sanctions. The solution was to be negotiated through a working group linked to the six-party talks.

A first round of talks in December ended in a stalemate. Negotiations resumed in February 2007, resulting in a breakthrough outlining the first concrete steps for putting into practice the September 2005 agreement in which North Korea pledged to dismantle its nuclear program if certain conditions were met.

The agreement reached in February set deadlines for the first phase of North Korea’s abandonment of all nuclear weapons and research programs. North Korea agreed to close and seal its main nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant at Yǒngbyǒn under the monitoring of international inspectors. In return, North Korea would receive 100,000 tons of fuel oil. South Korea also agreed to provide 400,000 tons of food aid to its impoverished northern neighbor as part of the deal. In addition, the United States and Japan agreed to begin bilateral talks with North Korea on normalizing relations. For the United States, that would involve the lifting of financial sanctions. The United States also agreed to resolve the Macao banking dispute within 30 days.

The February agreement also provided that North Korea would receive another 900,000 tons of fuel oil, or equivalent aid, in stages after taking steps to permanently disclose and dismantle all of its nuclear facilities and programs. The details of the second phase of the deal were to be worked out in a new round of six-nation talks scheduled for mid-2007.

In July 2007 inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified that North Korea had shut down its main nuclear reactor and all other nuclear facilities at the Yǒngbyǒn complex. In return, North Korea received its first shipments of fuel and food aid. A new round of six-nation talks ended later in July without an agreement on a timetable for North Korea to fully disable and disclose all of its nuclear facilities and programs. But in further talks held in late September, North Korea committed to a deadline of December 31.

In October 2007 Kim Jong Il hosted South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun in P’yŏngyang in the first face-to-face meeting of Korean leaders since the historic summit of 2000. Their talks resulted in a joint declaration that stated a bilateral commitment to work toward signing a formal peace treaty for the Korean War and that outlined a number of specific projects to build closer economic ties between the two countries. Among other projects, South Korea agreed to build a special economic zone in the North Korean port of Haeju, as well as a new railway and highway linking the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex to other cities. Under the 2000 summit agreement, South Korea had built the Kaesŏng complex as a special economic zone, and factories opened there in 2004. In November 2007 the prime ministers from both countries met for the first time in 15 years and held additional talks on improving bilateral ties.