ABSTRACT
The mode of settlement would maximize North Korea's chances to make a "soft landing". American policymakers in the Bush and Clinton administrations endorsed the goal of "soft landing" with considerable enthusiasm as the foundation of a step-by-step effort to convert North Korea from regional truant to a well-adjusted supporter of a stable status quo. The South Korean media played the news as conclusive evidence that the Republic of Korea (ROK) had now been marginalized even on inter-Korean issues. Policy had been to segregate security issues from political-economic issues with North Korea. That policy had been reconfirmed on many occasions in US-South Korean discussions of strategy. The nuclear crisis was a special challenge to the US system of policy making. American officials have stressed the importance of holding North Korea strictly to its Agreed Framework commitments. North Korea would yield its presumed capability to produce a nuclear device.
