Groundhog Day in North Korea
One of the biggest strategic variables of the last decade has been whether North Korea has produced enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The Agreed Framework signed by the United States and North Korea in October 1994 "froze" North Korea’s nuclear program; without it, North Korea could have made enough plutonium by 2000 for 60 ...
One of the biggest strategic variables of the last decade has been whether North Korea has produced enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The Agreed Framework signed by the United States and North Korea in October 1994 "froze" North Korea’s nuclear program; without it, North Korea could have made enough plutonium by 2000 for 60 to 80 nuclear warheads. The Central Intelligence Agency guesses that the North Koreans separated enough plutonium for one to two weapons before the framework took effect. But only the North Koreans know how much, if any, plutonium was actually produced, and they're not telling -- at least not yet.
One of the biggest strategic variables of the last decade has been whether North Korea has produced enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The Agreed Framework signed by the United States and North Korea in October 1994 "froze" North Korea’s nuclear program; without it, North Korea could have made enough plutonium by 2000 for 60 to 80 nuclear warheads. The Central Intelligence Agency guesses that the North Koreans separated enough plutonium for one to two weapons before the framework took effect. But only the North Koreans know how much, if any, plutonium was actually produced, and they’re not telling — at least not yet.
Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle, edited by David Albright and Kevin O’Neill and published by the Institute for Science and International Security, doesn’t definitively answer the 8 kilogram question (roughly the amount of plutonium needed for a first nuclear weapon), but it lives up to its title in every other respect. Part policy primer and physics text, with a whiff of John Le Carré thrown in, this clear and comprehensive guide to the North Korea nuclear crisis also includes chronologies, texts of relevant documents, and satellite photos of North Korean nuclear sites. (Transparency buffs will be struck by the superiority of today’s commercial imagery over declassified Cold War-era satellite shots.)
Although recent strides in U.S.-North Korea relations have pushed the nuclear issue out of the headlines, Albright and his contributors predict that it will make a jarring comeback: Under the framework, North Korea must account to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the plutonium produced by its old reactors before it can receive key components of new, more proliferation-resistant reactors that the United States, Japan, and South Korea have agreed to provide. That account will likely have to start taking place in 2004 — or roughly 10 years after North Korea’s original failure to comply with IAEA safeguards brought the Korean peninsula to the brink of war. Let’s hope that the intervening decade has made a difference.
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