WHEN NORTH KOREA STUNNED THE U.S.
in 2002 by admitting it was developing nuclear weapons
TIME said, "The conundrum of Kim, who succeeded his father Kim Il Sung eight years ago as North Korea's absolute ruler, has flummoxed Washington for years....Like his father, when Kim has been most desperate for foreign aid, he has used the rattle of nukes to frighten the U.S. and its allies into buying him off."
Some articles from the TIME Archive to help you know why North Korea's nuclear program is so scary:
North Korea's Kim Jong Il, 51, wears high-heeled shoes and a bouffant hairdo in an attempt to look taller. He is a poor speaker and worries whether he can match his father's commanding power. But even those who laugh loudest at his vanities take one of his indulgences quite seriously: Kim, who has taken over day-to-day dictatorial duties from his 81-year-old father, 'Great Leader' Kim Il Sung, appears determined to build a secret arsenal of nuclear weapons.
From Fighting Off Doomsday
By Bruce W. Nelan
Jun. 21, 1993
Hans Blix, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is expected to tell the U.N. this week that North Korea's violation of international nuclear safeguards is 'continuing and widening.' In addition to blocking inspections of two secret sites to which the IAEA demanded access last February, Pyongyang is now refusing to allow even routine monitoring of five declared nuclear sites at Yongbyon.
From War of Nerves At the Nuclear Brink
By Bill Powell
Nov. 8, 1993
President Clinton goes to Seoul and warns the North Koreans that if they ever use the nuclear weapon they are suspected of developing, it will bring a response that destroys their nation. North Korea says if economic sanctions are imposed because it refuses to permit inspection of its nuclear sites, Pyongyang will consider it 'an act of war.' Should the world be getting nervous?
From Frightening Face-Off
By J.F.O. McAllister
Dec. 13, 1993
All the military talk sparked fears that the yearlong diplomatic campaign to haul Pyongyang back inside the safeguards of the nonproliferation treaty had collapsed. Given the touchy unpredictability of the Kim Il Sung regime, Seoul and Washington were worried that even small military signals could escalate toward a catastrophic war.
From Pyongyang's Dangerous Game
By J.F.O. McAllister
Apr. 4, 1994
After North Korea's nuclear technicians blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from verifying whether Pyongyang has already secretly diverted enough plutonium for a bomb or two, Clinton for the first time asked the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue of economic sanctions. In the past, North Korea has vowed to consider sanctions an act of war, a pledge that will surely be on the minds of council members as they discuss whether to try to coerce Pyongyang into compliance with the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
From Down the Risky Path
By Bruce W. Nelan
Jun. 13, 1994
As the struggle over North Korea's nuclear capability crept a step closer to confrontation last week, men paid to think about the possibility of a war sketched dramatically different scenarios. In the worst case -- a computerized war game done in 1991 by one Pentagon analyst and never officially accepted -- an unstoppable North Korean force sweeps across the 150-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone, pushes south through disorganized defenders and reaches the southeastern port of Pusan within four weeks, just in time to block the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.
From What If... War Breaks Out In Korea?
By Jill Smolowe
Jun. 13, 1994
Any effort to choke the Kim regime economically would have to crack down on the traffic between Pyongyang and the liner's sponsor, Chongryun, the secretive 250,000-member General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, which is under the direct control of Pyongyang. The group is at the heart of a shadowy fund-raising effort that sends between $600 million and $1 billion annually to North Korea, most of it for the Kim regime itself.
From Kim Il Sung's Money Pipeline
By Edward W. Desmond
Jun. 13, 1994
Though the thoroughly Stalinist North Korea does not actually have a Kremlin, outside experts find themselves employing the oblique methods once used to evaluate Soviet politics to plumb the oddities in Pyongyang. Who is standing next to whom? What are the editorials hinting? Is Kim the successful successor or under challenge? These are not mere academic concerns when the U.S. needs to get on with talks about curbing North Korea's atom-bomb program.
From Lies and Whispers
By Bruce W. Nelan
Sep. 5, 1994
There was no doubt that North Korea was in danger of imploding economically. In Pyongyang, where food is most available, rations for bureaucrats have been reduced to between 3 and 6 oz. of rice per day. Many factories have closed; the rest are operating at 25% of capacity. Pyongyang is without electricity for hours each day. Many farmers are too weak from hunger to harvest crops or plant seeds.
From Ready to Implode?
By Douglas Waller
May. 05, 1997
Early last week, a powerful new missile lifted off from a secret base on North Korea's eastern coast.... Multiple-stage vehicles require expertise in guidance systems and other tricky technology. Thus last week's launch means the North is a step closer to building intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the mainland U.S
From Missile With A Message
By Donald MacIntyre
Sep. 14, 1998
The journalists, diplomats and security personnel accompanying Madeleine Albright to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea, left the real world with the bases loaded in the ninth in Game 1 of the World Series — and headed down a rabbit hole.
From The Strange World of N. Korea's 'Great Leader'
By Massimo Calabresi
Oct. 28, 2000
For a moment last week it looked as if George W. Bush was about to declare war on three enemies at once. During his State of the Union speech, when the President asserted that Iran, Iraq and North Korea 'constitute an axis of evil,' he fired a shot that had been months in the making.
From The Axis Of Evil Is It For Real?
By Massimo Calabresi
Feb. 11, 2002
When the Bush Administration presented evidence to North Korean leaders on Oct. 3 that their country was developing nuclear weapons, it expected the regime to lie about it. A day later came the shocker. Yes, we've been secretly working to produce nukes, a top aide to 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong Il told astonished U.S. envoy James Kelly. And, he added, we've got 'more powerful' weapons--presumably meaning biological and chemical agents--to boot. He was not apologetic at all, says a U.S. official, but 'assertive, aggressive about it.'
From Look Who's Got The Bomb
By Johanna McGeary
Oct. 28, 2002
It took 12 days for U.S. officials to go public with North Korea's admission, which suggests they wrestled with the potential complications. Inside the Bush wheelhouse, the hard-liners will debate among themselves: Should we isolate North Korea--or just bomb its reprocessing facilities? Cooler heads are likely to prevail, and Bush will team up with China and Japan to force Pyongyang into another give-up-the-nukes-for-aid agreement--but only after enough time passes so that no one can accuse the men who model themselves on Churchill of looking like Chamberlain.
From When Evil Is Everywhere
By Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs
Oct. 28, 2002
North Korea watchers say rebellion—whether it is a mass revolt or a surgical strike from inside the Party or military—can only occur if people are prepared to die for it. They say it is impossible to predict when or if North Koreans will achieve the mix of desperation and bravery necessary for combustion, the same fusion that brought down other dysfunctional communist regimes more than a decade ago.
From Northern Exposure
By Donald Macintyre
Nov. 4, 2002
Photos and Graphics: The Dying State
Following discussions with South Korean and Japanese officials in Washington, Tuesday, the Bush administration's announced it was willing to talk with North Korea — although it would offer no quid-pro-quo for Pyongyang complying with its nuclear obligations.
From Why the U.S. Changed its North Korea Stance
By Tony Karon
Jan. 07, 2003
What they really wanted, it seemed to me, was a face-saving way out of the uranium-enrichment program, which, according to U.S. intelligence, is years away from producing the raw material for even a single nuclear weapon. In the meantime, because the program violates Pyongyang's previous nonnuclear commitments, it is damaging the regime's relationships with its neighbors--relationships North Korea had been industriously seeking to improve to obtain the aid and trade that may be essential to its survival.
From Better Start Talking--and Fast!
By Don Oberdorfer
Jan. 13, 2003
North Korea, which the CIA believes already has enough fissile material for one or two bombs, is poised to extract enough plutonium from the spent fuel to produce four to eight more within a matter of months. It is unknown whether North Korea has ever actually constructed a nuclear weapon. But given the relative simplicity of making a crude device, some U.S. analysts suspect that it has a bomb, albeit an untested one.
From
How Dangerous is North Korea?
By Romesh Ratnesar and Laura Bradford
Jan. 13, 2003
Photos and Graphics
In 1994 the U.S. almost went to war with the North to stop it from building such a nuclear arsenal, but with the U.S. military stretched thin around the globe, war is an even less attractive option now than it was then. But the alternative is awful: not just that North Korea might one day threaten the U.S. directly but also that the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang could decide to sell its nuclear material to other rogue states or to terrorists. Last week Chinese diplomats shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington trying to restart talks among the U.S., China and North Korea, but internal divisions between hard-liners and moderates in all three capitals are stalling progress.
From The Next WMD Crisis
By Massimo Calabresi
Jul. 28, 2003
So what is it? Conciliation? Hard line? Such divisions have plagued President George W. Bush's approach to nuclear-security issues with both Iran and North Korea, the remaining points on the 'axis of evil.' The neocons argue that the only way to curb the suspected atomic ambitions of these regimes is to depose the rulers. The moderates believe that engaging adversaries in dialogue can diminish the threat more easily and cheaply. So the Bush team has alternately ignored, threatened, cajoled and coerced the two countries, driven not by a coherent strategy but by a disorderly struggle at the highest levels to find common tactical ground between two irreconcilable approaches, engagement and confrontation.
From What Will Make Them Stop?
By Johanna McGeary, Scott Macleod and Massimo Calabresi
Nov. 3, 2003
Khan expanded. He made contact with the North Korean government as early as 1993, according to Pakistani investigators. In the late 1990s he began shipping centrifuges and the means to make them--'the whole package,' as a U.S. intelligence official put it--in bulk to Pyongyang, sometimes aboard Pakistani military cargo planes.
From The Man Who Sold the Bomb
By Bill Powell and Tim McGirk
Feb. 14, 2005
Photos and Graphics
China is the only country on earth thought to have any influence over the regime in North Korea—the oil and food Beijing provides is Pyongyang's lifeline—and the message from Bush was simple. It was time to get serious about dealing with the North. The letter's contents were straightforward, and stark. The U.S. Administration, Beijing was told, possessed solid evidence that North Korea had sold uranium hexafluoride—a necessary ingredient in the process of making a nuclear bomb—to Libya as recently as 2003.
From Kim Raises the Stakes
By Bill Powell
Feb. 14, 2005
Hard-liners in George W. Bush's administration, never known for their diplomatic bedside manner, have called it the 'strangulation strategy': forcing the North Korean despot Kim Jong Il to shelve his nuclear weapons program by cutting off his isolated country from trade and aid.
From Walking the Tightrope
By Bill Powell
Feb. 20, 2005
The U.S. still hopes to confront the North Koreans in a multilateral setting, and the linchpin of that strategy is China. Bush has long believed that Beijing has the most to gain and lose on the Korean peninsula and would quietly pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Beijing has been North Korea's closest ally, funneling oil and food. China would have to absorb many refugees if Kim's regime failed.
From What Does North Korea Want?
By Michael Duffy
Feb. 21, 2005
By most measures, North Korea remains one of the most isolated and desperate outposts on the planet. Most North Koreans earn barely enough to feed their families, and the country is plagued by chronic shortages of everything from food to fuel to electricity. But in recent years modest reforms aimed at liberalizing the economy have helped pry open the country just enough for its people to glimpse the possibilities of a better life.
From Cracks in Kim's World
By Donald Macintyre
Feb. 21, 2005
The U.S. believes North Korea could have as many as eight nukes. And although testing one would mark Pyongyang's unequivocal entry into the world's exclusive club of proven nuclear powers, North Korea watchers say the potential fallout with its ally China could stay Pyongyang's hand. But President Bush isn't taking any chances. He urged China's President Hu Jintao last week to rein in his irksome neighbor. And in case Kim Jong Il doesn't get the message, the U.S. is rotating Stealth bombers and fighter jets through Guam, where they are within striking distance of North Korea.
From Parsing North Korea's Nuclear Game
By Donald Macintyre
May. 16, 2005
If implemented, the blueprint released Monday will yield an agreement nearly identical to the 'Agreed Framework' negotiated by the Clinton Administration in 1994, which President Bush all but rejected in 2001. In that agreement, the U.S. also promised aid, a light-water reactor and the possibility of normal relations in exchange for a guarantee from North Korea that it would mothball its nuclear weapons program.
From An Agreement on Nukes
By Matthew Forney
Sep. 20, 2005
Last week the U.S. published a list of some 60 forbidden fruits, including iPods, Segway scooters, cognac, leather handbags, silk underwear, plasma TVs, baby grand pianos, jetskis, snowmobiles and eau de toilette.... Cutting off the supply of expensive gifts Kim lavishes upon high-level loyalists to ensure their allegiance could undermine his rule enough to force him back to the negotiating table[EM]or so the theory goes.
From Taking Kim's Toys Away
By Tim Kindseth
Dec. 3, 2006
Last week's talks underlined the painful truth that, right now, Pyongyang is holding most of the cards. The two principals leading the talks with Pyongyang, Washington and Beijing, are seemingly hamstrung.
From Why the Six-Party North Korea Talks Failed
By Simon Elegant
Dec. 23, 2006
The current agreement simply brings us back to the position in which the Bush Administration criticized the Clinton team for leaving us: freezing and monitoring the Yongbyon facilities without ensuring their complete dismantlement. In fact, we are actually worse off than when the Agreed Framework was signed, as North Korea has used the past five years of wrangling to expand its nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, a deal is a deal, and better than no deal at all.
From North Korea: A Deal is Better Than Nothing
By Han Sung Joo
Feb. 15, 2007
In return for shutting down Yongbyon, which diplomats hope will occur as early as next month, the North will receive 50,000 tons of fuel oil from the U.S. and the other participants in the six-party talks: South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
From Prodding Pyongyang
By Bill Powell
Jun. 28, 2007
But one month ago, the U.S. returned the money to its account holders, a diplomatic chip in what the U.S. and its partners in the six-party negotiations with North Korea believe is a more important game: getting Kim to give up his country's nuclear-weapons program. Shortly afterward, the North agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to witness the shutdown of its plutonium reactor in Yongbyon.
From The Tony Soprano of North Korea
By Bill Powell and Adam Zagorin
Jul. 12, 2007
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