Introduction

The Six-Party Talks are aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program through a negotiating process involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, and Russia. Since the talks began in August 2003, the negotiations have been bedeviled by diplomatic standoffs among individual Six-Party member states--particularly between the United States and North Korea. In April 2009, North Korea quit the talks and a year later, revealed a vast new industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility at the main Yongbyon nuclear complex to visiting U.S. scientists. Because Pyongyang appears intent on maintaining its nuclear program, some experts are pessimistic the talks can achieve anything beyond managing the North Korean threat. The Obama administration has been pursuing talks with the other four countries in the process to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiation table. In February 2012, under new leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea announced it would suspend nuclear tests and allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment activities at Yongbyon in exchange for food aid from the United States, rekindling hope of possibly resuming the Six-Party Talks.

Share

--

--

The Framework

The Six-Party Talks began in August 2003. Numerous rounds of negotiations resulted in a September 2005 agreement in which Pyongyang agreed to abandon its quest to become a nuclear power. The talks came after a policy reversal during the presidency of George W. Bush, who had initially ended the policy of direct engagement with Pyongyang endorsed by President Bill Clinton before him. Bush included North Korea in the "Axis of Evil" during his 2002 State of the Union address and, that October, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded that Pyongyang was pursuing a uranium enrichment program. According to Washington, this violated the spirit of the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which the United States pledged to provide fuel oil and construct two light-water reactors while North Korea promised to end a plutonium enrichment program in exchange.

North Korea admitted to the uranium enrichment program but refused to end it unless the United States agreed to hold bilateral talks and normalize relations. When Washington rebuffed these demands, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), forced IAEA inspectors to leave, and restarted its plutonium enrichment program. With tensions mounting, heightened further by the March 2003 interception of a U.S. spy plane by North Korean fighter aircraft over the Sea of Japan, the United States, North Korea, and China held trilateral talks in Beijing in April 2003. These negotiations served as a prelude to the first round of Six-Party Talks, which brought other regional players--South Korea, Japan, and Russia--into the fold.

Stop-and-Go Negotiations

According to the September 2005 pact, Pyongyang would eventually abandon its nuclear program, rejoin the NPT, and allow IAEA monitors to return. In exchange, North Korea would receive food and energy assistance from the other members. The statement also paved the way for Pyongyang to normalize relations with both the United States and Japan, and for the negotiation of a peace agreement for the Korean peninsula.

However, negotiations hit a roadblock in November 2005 after the U.S. Treasury Department placed restrictions on Macao-based Banco Delta Asia, which Washington accused of laundering $25 million in North Korean funds. The Macanese government subsequently froze Pyongyang's roughly fifty accounts held in the bank. As the talks fell apart, North Korea stepped up its provocative behavior, conducting missile tests in July 2006 and a nuclear test in October 2006.

After the nuclear crisis came to a head, Beijing pressed North Korea to rejoin the talks. In February 2007, during the sixth round of talks, members hammered out a denuclearization plan--seen by Washington as a means to jump-start the September 2005 statement--involving a sixty-day deadline for North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid and the release of the Banco Delta Asia funds. The deal also involved a series of bilateral talks, including talks between North Korea and the United States.

In July 2007, the denuclearization program gained momentum as Pyongyang shut down its main plutonium-producing nuclear plant at Yongbyon. In October, Pyongyang agreed to end its nuclear program in exchange for aid and diplomatic concessions, and started to disable the Yongbyon plant by removing eight thousand fuel rods from the nuclear reactor under the guidance of U.S. experts.

In May 2008, North Korea handed over around eighteen thousand pages of documents to the United States detailing production records of its nuclear programs. This handover was followed by a declaration a month later, as agreed in the Six-Party Talks. In June, it imploded the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear plant, and the Bush administration responded by removing restrictions on North Korea from the Trading with the Enemy Act. Following Pyongyang's agreement to some verification measures in October, Washington took North Korea off the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

Critics of the Bush administration's policy toward North Korea said Washington had capitulated to Pyongyang, asserting the North Korean declaration from June 2008 fell short on three important counts: it did not include details of suspected uranium enrichment; it did not address its proliferation activities to countries like Syria and Libya; and it failed to give an account of the nuclear weapons already produced.

By the end of the Bush administration, Pyongyang failed to agree to a verification protocol for its nuclear program. The new Obama administration in Washington signaled early on that it would be ready to engage Pyongyang. However, North Korea's multiple missile tests, followed by a nuclear test in May 2009, resulted in the United States pushing for tougher sanctions through a new UN Security Council Resolution. Tensions with North Korea heightened throughout 2010 as it sank a South Korean navy ship, revealed a new uranium enrichment facility and a light-water reactor under construction at Yongbyon, and shelled the South Korean island of Yeongpyeong. In July and October 2011, the United States and North Korea held bilateral talks; Pyongyang said it would return to the Six-Party Talks only if they occur without preconditions, but the United States and South Korea have demanded that North Korea demonstrate its commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons and related programs before talks resume. In February 2012, Pyongyang agreed to suspend nuclear tests and allow IAEA to monitor its activities at Yongbyon, possibly paving the way for the resumption of multilateral talks.

Objectives for Parties Involved

United States. For Washington, the Six-Party Talks serve as a means to make North Korea's nuclear weapons program a multinational problem rather than an issue to be solved through bilateral discussion. Although Washington worries about the Communist state's poor human rights record, the chief U.S. concern remains Pyongyang's nuclear program and possible sale of nuclear materials and technology to hostile states and terrorist groups. As part of any agreement, Washington wants the reclusive state to accept IAEA monitors in the country.

North Korea. The regime seeks a nonaggression security pledge from the United States, which deploys more than twenty-five thousand troops in South Korea. Pyongyang also wants normalized relations with Washington and unfettered access to economic aid from other Six-Party countries.

South Korea. Frozen in an unresolved conflict with North Korea, South Korea's ultimate goal is the denuclearization and reunification of the Korean peninsula. Seoul also wishes to reform and liberalize North Korea's decrepit economy (PDF) through greater economic engagement to avoid the potential cost of reunification, either in the form of a flood of economic immigrants from the North or in actual budgetary outlays to help rebuild the North's civilian economy.

China. Beijing serves as Pyongyang's long-standing ally and main trade partner, and has used its influence with the Kim regime to bring North Korea to the Six-Party negotiating table. China's ability to play such a role in the talks boosts its relations with Washington. Like South Korea, China fears a rush of refugees across its border and has provided North Korea with energy and food assistance. Beijing has been resistant to implement stringent UN resolutions imposing sanctions against Pyongyang. North Korea also serves as a buffer zone between China and U.S. troops in South Korea.

Russia. Moscow's position at the table allows Russia, also concerned with refugee flows, to reassert its influence in Northeast Asia. Russia has joined China in warning against cornering North Korea with harsh sanctions.

Japan. Tokyo worries about North Korea's testing of missiles that could reach Japan's population centers or U.S. military bases there. But Japan also sees the Six-Party Talks as a forum for negotiating an admission of Pyongyang's guilt in the 1970s and 1980s abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korean spies. The issue serves as a divisive point in the U.S.-Japan alliance; Tokyo did not want Washington to remove North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list until the abduction question was resolved. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has demanded at times that Tokyo not participate in the talks.

Obstacles to the Talks

An unpredictable North Korean regime. Despite shifting ground on holding bilateral talks, the United States has found North Korea erratic in negotiations and actions. "They know that we have a tough time figuring out what really motivates them," said Christopher Hill, Washington's former chief envoy to the talks.

Differing approaches by Six-Party governments. CFR Senior Fellow Scott Snyder says the Six-Party Talks and other regional efforts preceding it failed to meet the North Korean challenge because the participating states "placed their own immediate priorities and concerns above the collective need to halt North Korea's nuclear program." While Japan and the United States consistently have pushed for strong sanctions in response to North Korean weapons testing, China, South Korea, and Russia often have pushed for less stringent sanctions out of fear that a sudden toppling of the regime would lead to major refugee influxes.

U.S. resistance to bilateral negotiations. For much of the Bush administration's tenure, Washington resisted holding one-on-one talks with Pyongyang, preferring the Six-Party Talks so that any compromises with the Kim regime were framed as part of multilateral negotiations. Yet North Korea repeatedly demanded direct talks as a condition for stopping its nuclear program. In June 2007, former envoy Hill made a surprise visit to Pyongyang to push forward the February deal, finalizing a reversal in the U.S. stance on dealing directly with North Korea. The two countries have since held bilateral talks on several occasions.

Solving the Policy Puzzle

So far, the Six-Party Talks have failed to denuclearize North Korea and have brought few results. Several experts think North Korea is now determined to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state rather than to negotiate an end to its nuclear program. Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger writes in the Washington Post that "the issue for diplomacy has become whether the goal should be to manage North Korea's nuclear arsenal or to eliminate it." He argues any policy that does not eliminate the North's nuclear military capability "in effect acquiesces in its continuation."

After Pyongyang walked out of the Six-Party Talks in May 2009, the Obama administration has pursued negotiations with the other parties in the forum to signal that it hasn't abandoned the goal of North Korea's denuclearization. In a testimony to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in June 2009, CFR's Snyder said this new process "provides the best available means by which to increase pressure on North Korea to return to the Six-Party Talks and to honor its commitments to denuclearization."

Some experts say that even though a multilateral approach may be the best option, it has produced few results. Charles Pritchard, former ambassador and special envoy for negotiations with North Korea from 2001-2003, writes that "it is a bilateral approach between the United States and North Korea that has worked the best, that has produced the most results in the shortest period of time." But in the end, few analysts believe North Korea has any intention of giving up its nuclear program and argue that North Korea makes concessions to gain the food and fuel aid it needs to survive. Even following North Korea's February 2012 announcement of suspending its enrichment activities, some in the United States remained skeptical that it would last. "North Korea, we now know, will probably never truly and fully disarm of its own volition," argues Max Fisher at the Atlantic.

Carin Zissis also contributed to this Backgrounder.