The Enigma of The North
An assessment of the North Korean nuclear threat.
It is early March 2000. Tensions have steadily escalated since mid-November, when stories leaked to the American news media hinted at the existence of yet another North Korean secret nuclear weapons facility and suggested that Pyongyang was deploying Taepo-dong missiles capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska. President Bill Clinton sends retired general Colin Powell and former senator Sam Nunn as special emissaries to Pyongyang, but the talks stall. Food aid from the United States, Japan, and South Korea is halted. Reports of still-mounting famine filter out as many private aid groups withdraw from North Korea, fearing that food is being misdirected to the military and the Communist Party. The rhetoric intensifies. North Korean leaders charge that food is being used as a weapon. The United States demands that Pyongyang abandon its covert nuclear weapons program. North Korea delivers a bombastic reply.
Finally, a desperate North Korea unleashes a round of artillery and Scud missile fire onto the outskirts of Seoul and sends special operations brigades through tunnels under the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South. As the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea brace for war, the Pentagon places all U.S. forces around the world on alert. Then Pyongyang issues an ultimatum: "We have nuclear missiles, ready to launch on warning, targeting Tokyo and U.S. bases in Okinawa. We seek to discuss the terms of unification with Seoul. If the United States or Japan intervenes in this internal Korean matter, we will level Tokyo and the U.S. installations in Okinawa."
It may sound like a Tom Clancy thriller, but such a crisis is, unfortunately, not just the stuff of paperback fantasies. Five summers after a political crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program brought the United States and North Korea to the brink of war, the nightmare Korean "implosion-explosion" scenario--a North Korean internal collapse leading to a desperate act of war--against which U.S. military forces have spent endless hours planning remains entirely in the realm of the possible. Indeed, an August 1998 New York Times report about the existence of a suspected secret nuclear bomb-making facility under a North Korean mountain and Pyongyang's unexpected firing of a three-stage missile over Japan at the end of that month underscore a troubling possibility: North Korea may have managed to build not only one or two nuclear devices but also new means to deliver them against distant targets. This, despite an October 1994 nuclear deal dubbed the Agreed Framework, in which North Korea agreed to freeze its known nuclear weapons program in exchange for a variety of blandishments from the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The payoff included two light-water nuclear power reactors for generating electricity (engineered to prevent the creation of materials useful in making weapons), 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually, security assurances, and the promise of improved relations with the United States.