ABSTRACT
Since the North Korean nuclear crisis first erupted on the international stage with the March 1993 North Korean announcement that it was withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Western analysts have been trying to crack into the black box of North Korean decision making and understand its perspectives on nuclear technology. Ironically, however, at the very same time that the United States was trying to learn more about North Korea, the single best source of information on this highly secretive communist recluse-Russia-was being held at arms length by Western negotiators. Indeed, the eventual signing of the October 1994 Agreed Framework between Pyongyang and Washington froze out the Russians from their previous position in North Korea, causing considerable frustration and irritation in Moscow. However, as time has passed, it has become clear that the United States still knows very little and perhaps understands even less about the forces that propelled Pyongyang to pursue a nuclear weapon and to risk alienating itself on the world scene even further by threatening to withdraw from the NPT.
