ABSTRACT
Why did North Korea defect from the NPT in 2003? The prevailing view is that Pyongyang has always been determined to arm. That view fails to explain significant anomalies in its nuclear effort over the past two decades: As of today, the only way for the DPRK to make the fissile material it needs for weapons is to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from its reactor at Yongbyon and extract the plutonium it needs for nuclear weapons. Yet Pyongyang stopped reprocessing in the fall of 1991, some three years before signing the Agreed Framework, and did not resume until 2003. It stopped again in 2007 and did not resume as of the time of writing. It fabricated only a limited number of fuel rods before 1994 and has yet to make more. It thereby produced significantly less plutonium for nuclear warheads than it could have. If North Korea was determined to arm, then why stop? No state’s motivation for building nuclear weapons can be known with certainty, but North Korea has been unusually explicit about why it sought to acquire nuclear weapons – insecurity. The prime reason for that insecurity is the United States and what Pyongyang calls US “hostile policy.” No country has been the target of more US nuclear threats than North Korea – at least seven since 1945.1 Even when the United States did not expressly menace the DPRK, the US military presence in the region posed an existential nuclear threat. North Korea’s concept of “hostile policy” encompasses more than the existential threat and the explicit threat of first use of nuclear weapons against it. It includes possible invasion by conventional force, economic sanctions, and attempts to suborn its government. A February 10, 2005 statement by its Foreign Ministry declaring North Korea to be a nuclear weapons state emphasized US enmity:
As we have clarified more than once, we justly urged the US to renounce its hostile policy toward the DPRK whose aim was to seek the latter’s “regime change” and switch its policy to that of peaceful co-existence between the two countries. . . . However, the administration turned down our just request and adopted it as its policy not to co-exist with the DPRK.
