Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

So ended the first phase of one of the potentially most serious confrontations of the post–Cold War era. Had the United States government followed the advice of its military, it might have produced its own version of the Russian catastrophe in Chechnya (as it may yet at some point in the future). Had the North Koreans pursued their nuclear program (as they may still decide to do), they would have achieved their own Iraq-like status as the true pariah of East Asia. The United States could have avoided this confrontation had it opened some constructive channel of communication with Pyongyang years ago; instead, our soldiers continue to glare at theirs across the table at Panmunjom, within the Demilitarized Zone between the two parts of Korea. The West’s master theorist of war, Karl von Clausewitz, once argued that even after hostilities have commenced it is desirable to keep some channels of communications open among belligerents; failure to establish diplomatic ties in peacetime was, he thought, inexcusable. American—North Korean relations have been an apt example of his point.

Talks to implement the Carter-Kim agreement opened on July 8, 1994, the day Kim Il-sung unexpectedly died, and as a result were immediately suspended. His death and the lack of credible information about his son and successor, Kim Jong-il, which might have set back the negotiations, actually seemed to have little effect on the discussions. But they did create serious problems in South Korea, where the government prohibited any public expressions of grief over Kim’s death and banned a church-sponsored human chain that was to extend to the Demilitarized Zone on the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan. The South Korean government also released letters that Russian president Boris Yeltsin had given to President Kim Yong-sam on a visit to Moscow in June 1994 allegedly proving that Kim Il-sung had started the Korean War. The police even entered elite Seoul National University’s campus to arrest some 1,400 students who were calling for U.S. troops to get out of Korea and quit blocking unification.

On August 5, 1994, talks between North Korea and the United States resumed in Geneva, leading to an “Agreed Framework,” which the two sides signed that October 21. According to this agreement the United States was to arrange for the construction by the year 2003 of two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors in North Korea to replace its current graphite-moderated reactors (a Soviet design from which plutonium can rather easily be extracted for possible use in nuclear weapons). The United States was also to provide fuel oil to replace energy lost by the closing of North Korea’s current reactors, and it was to guarantee that it would not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Finally, the United States pledged to open trade and some form of diplomatic relations. For its part North Korea agreed to stop using and then dismantle its Russian reactors, ship its used nuclear fuel rods out of the country, remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow IAEA inspections of its nuclear sites.

The new reactors the United States was to provide were estimated to cost in the range of $4 billion to $4.5 billion. By March 1995, South Korea had agreed to pay about 70 percent of their cost and Japan 20 percent (with the remainder covered by various, mainly European countries). Although the United States negotiated the agreement, it agreed to pay nothing. All three nations—the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan—set up a new organization called the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) to do the construction work.