A Framework for Achieving Reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula: Beyond the Geneva Agreement

Abstract

Despite harsh statements by some U.S. congressional critics and initial concerns voiced by many South Korean observers, the Agreed Framework between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) reached in Geneva on October 21, 1994, successfully survived the scrutiny of at least seven congressional hearings through March of 1995. A January 30 editorial in the usually critical Wall Street Journal concluded that despite the generosity shown to an undeserving regime, the deal with the DPRK offers important advantages by capping and promising eventually to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. An agreement on June 12 in Kuala Lumpur between the U.S. and the DPRK and a letter from President Clinton to ROK President Kim Young Sam clarified questions about whether the DPRK would accept South Korea's central role in providing light water reactors as specified under the Agreed Framework. The impetus for the success or failure of the agreement now lies in whether the parties involved can agree on the details of implementation. By choosing not to challenge the Geneva Agreed Framework, the Journal and some members of Congress have accepted the prospect that the agreement's implementation may halt and eventually dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The DPRK has agreed not to refuel the 5 MW experimental reactor at Yongbyon and not to reprocess over 8,000 fuel rods removed from the reactor in May 1994, which contain enough plutonium to make up to six nuclear weapons. In addition, the North Koreans have halted the construction of two larger reactors that might have produced enough plu-