Progress on North Korea nuclear issue

[thombergeron]

Quinn, correct me if I'm wrong, but you follow this issue fairly closely. Can you bring us some enlightenment here? Or anyone else with an informed comment, for that matter.

Obviously, bringing Yongbyon offline is a huge accomplishment for the international community. Congrats to Chris Hill for his part in bringing this off.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...vMU&refer=home

But I can't tell how this agreement differs from the Agreed Framework that the Clinton Administration had in place. We have fuel oil shipments, and a movement toward normalized relations in exchange for a suspension of enrichment work and IAEA inspections. Why was that bad six years ago, and acceptable now?

And seemingly, the intervening six years have given Pyongyang time to assemble six to eight plutonium warheads of indeterminate tonnage.

Also, do you have any insight regarding why the North Koreans suddenly abandoned their insistence on bilateral talks?

[Quinn]

Hey, Thom. Your conclusion – that the current agreement differs little from the previous, ineffective Agreed Framework – is correct. Honestly, when I read the first reports of the deal taking shape, I was so disappointed that I stopped paying serious attention – so some of my facts may not be up to date.

That said, the Bush Administration was right to criticize the Clinton Administration’s decision to back Jimmy Carter’s disastrous Agreed Framework, particularly given said agreement's myopic disregard for North Korea’s lengthy history of violating international agreements. Since North Korea builds most of its important facilities far underground, often in the mountainous Northeast, no one is even sufficiently certain that Yongbyon is the so called Hermit Kingdom’s only nuclear facility. Our intel on the DPRK was so bad at the time – and it isn’t much better now – that we had to rely upon Russian agents for all of our critical intel (including the secret placement of detectors to tell us that the Agreed Framework was being violated in the first place).

The Bush Administration’s 180 degree shift in its approach to dealing with Pyongyang entails many of the same strategic miscalculations as those of the Clinton Admin., only worse. While I’m not usually a huge fan of the overly biased Heritage Foundation, here is an article that accurately addresses many of the new agreement’s initial shortfalls – shortfalls that to my understanding have not been sufficiently rectified:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Asi...fic/wm1358.cfm

There are two important differences between now and 1994:

1) Aside from its very impressive array of artillery (Seoul could literally be destroyed in a matter of hours) and its missiles, the DPRK’s once awesome conventional military capability now pales in comparison to that of South Korea. This limits the DPRK's options and has affected its negotiating posture accordingly.

2) Pyonyang is actively assisting in the technological development of Tehran’s own missile and nuclear weapons programs. It’s widely known that Iran funds the DPRK’s missile program in exchange for North Korea sharing the technical know-how it gains from any research attached to that program. Though it has never been proven, it has long been suspected that a similar deal existed (or still exists) with reference to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Hope this helps a little. I've also taken the liberty of attaching a chart that shows the Iranian and North Korean designations for their North Korean designed missiles..

-Quinn