The population of the DPRK is reportedly 22,466,481 120 less than half the population of the ROK and 1/7th of Japan’s. Yet, the DPRK is estimated to have a military half the troop strength of the United States’, which has a population of over 250,000,000. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) is the fifth-largest armed force in the world, just behind the PRC, the United States, Russia and India121 but is not even ranked in the top 25 most populous countries in the world. Additionally, the DPRK’s crippled economy is estimated to spend 33.9 percent of its GDP122 on the military, in support of the belief in keeping the “Army first.”
Through unclassified sources there is little data on the conventional capabilities of the KPA; however, what is known of the DPRK’s military strength has earned it the status of being the most militarized country in the world.123 In the past, the forward massing of troops along the demilitarized zone next to South Korea, the large army numbering 1.17 million active-duty personnel backed by a ready-reserve force of 7.45 million,124 improving missile technology, and concentration of artillery aimed at the South Korean capital of Seoul were the sources of anxiety. Today, the larger threat looming is the possibility of marrying the North’s developing missile technology with the unconfirmed nuclear weapon capability that the DPRK is believed to possess. This is the most troubling threat for the other states which make-up the six nations involved in talks with the DPRK. A volatile regime, which is isolated and diplomatically ostracized, bent on practicing brinksmanship to get what it wants; a nation which is economically strained with a hungered population, armed with nuclear weapons who would sell the weapons of
120 CIA, “The World Fact book,” CIA Online [home page on-line]; available from
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html; Internet; accessed 27 February 2004. 121 Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., The Armed Forces of North Korea (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001), 1.
122 CIA, “The World Fact book,” CIA Online [home page on-line]; available from
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html; Internet; accessed 27 February 2004. 123 Bermudez, 1.
mass destruction (WMD) to the highest bidder. In 2001, the DPRK earned $560 million in missile exports.125
In 1994 the DPRK pushed the United States to the brink of war because it was using a Soviet-provided power reactor at Yongbyon to enrich uranium for making plutonium for nuclear weapons. Tensions receded with an agreement called the Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK. The United States suspected, but could not confirm, that the DPRK had enough time and unaccounted for material to have made one or two nuclear bombs. The United States knew that the DPRK had sought nuclear weapons technology, and knew that they asked the People’s Republic of China to provide it since Mao’s regime successfully exploded their 1st nuclear device in 1964.126
In October 2002 the United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James A. Kelly confronted Kim Jong-Il’s regime with evidence that the North was defying the 1994 Agreed Framework by continuing the uranium-enriching program.127 Kim Jong-Il’s regime admitted to the breach and subsequently withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, rendered IAEA’s monitoring devices ineffective and reopened the nuclear plant to make plutonium. This marks the beginning of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula.
Pyongyang announced that they restarted the Yongbyon reactor for the purpose of producing electricity; however, the five-megawatt reactor is not connected to any power grid.128 Complicating this matter is the DPRK’s proven short-range Rodong missiles which were test-fired into the Sea of Japan on February 24 and then again March 10, 2003. Prior to this, in August 1998 the DPRK had test-launched a Taepodong ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. In December 2003, the United States intercepted a ship bound for Yemen loaded with North Korean Scud missiles, proof that the DPRK was willing to sell proven military technology. There is also evidence that the 125 James Dao, “U.S. Official Says North Korea Could Sell Bomb Material,” New York Times, 5
February 2003, p.A12. Doug Bandow, Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Why Military Action
Should Not Be Used to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Crisis. Cato Institute, 12 May 2003, 8. 126 Oberdorfer, 252.
127 Doug Bandow, Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Why Military Action Should Not Be Used to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Crisis. Cato Institute, 12 May 2003, 2.
DPRK is working on developing its Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the
Taepodong 2 program with ambitions for it to carry a nuclear warhead.129 All this
evidence adds clarity to the DPRK’s activities (see Appendix C for a chronology of the DPRK’s threatening actions). The question that was being asked by many U.S. officials was how did the North obtain the technology to enrich uranium and produce plutonium? This of course is still being investigated but all leads points towards Pakistan’s Nuclear Energy Minister, Abdul Qadeer Khan (A.Q. Khan), who admitted in early 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, something North Korea denies. 130
Since the DPRK was confronted with this issue, U.S. officials estimate that the North may have up to another five or six nuclear weapons for a total of six to eight, citing the removal and unaccountable 8,000 spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor.131 On February 4, 2003, the Honorable Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State testified in front of the United States Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Korean peninsula and stated:
North Korea’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery are a fundamental obstacle to that appealing vision for the future. They are also a threat to the international community, regional security, U.S. interests, and U.S. forces, which remain an integral part of stability in the region. It is time for North Korea to turn away from this self- destructive course. They have nothing to gain from acquiring nuclear weapons-and much to lose. Indeed, every day, the people of that country are paying a terrible price for these programs in international isolation and misspent national resources. 132
It is this potential nuclear problem which poses a serious threat to the United States and Northeast Asia. The Bush administration has succeeded in persuading Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia to adopt a common goal in dealing with this threat.
129AFP available from http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040506/1/3k1kj.html in United States Pacific
Command’s Virtual Information Center, 6 May 2004.
130Philip P. Pan, Washington Post. “Washingtonpost.com” N. Korea Retreats From Offer on Nuclear
Plans. [home page on-line]; available from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ N. Korea Retreats From
Offer on Nuclear Plans; Internet; accessed 6 March 2004.
131 Don Oberdorfer, “North Korea” (lecture to the World Affairs Council, Monterey, California, 25
February 2004).
132 Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, WMD Developments on the Korean Peninsula: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, 108th Cong., 1st sess., 4 February 2003, 6.
Washington Post’s foreign affairs journalist, Philip P. Pan reported that the common goal
calls for the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling (CVID) of North Korea’s nuclear programs (civilian and/or military) before engaging into discussions with the North for security assurances and economic aid.133 Not quite a pluralistic and resolute goal, some evidence suggests that the United States may acquiesce to Seoul’s calls to rethink its CVID position and to adopt a “more moderate approach to inducing North Korea to change its policies.”134
Other developments continue to trouble the United States and its allies. Shortly after the close of the 2nd round (February 25-28, 2004) of the six-party talks in Beijing, a Japanese newspaper, Sankei, reported on March 10, 2004 that a undisclosed military source unveiled a plan in which North Korea may be collaborating with Iran, another “axis of evil” country, to construct an underground facility in order to manufacture a centrifugal machine for developing enriched uranium in North Korea’s northwestern city of Kwisong.135 This is consistent with other reports which suggest that “as the talks drag on, North Korea might continue building its nuclear arsenal.”136
4. The Pressures Shaping DPRK’s Actions