home > by publication type > backgrounders > State Sponsors: North Korea
Email
| Author: | Vikaas Sharma |
|---|
Updated: June 28, 2008
Editor's Note: On June 26, 2008, after Pyongyang handed over a declaration of its nuclear activities, President Bush said he intended to remove North Korea from the terrorism list within forty-five days.
North Korea, also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is the world’s only unreconstructed Stalinist country. Under its current leader, Kim Jong-Il, North Korea maintains its border with South Korea as the most heavily fortified national boundary in the world. Human rights groups accuse North Korea’s government of a plethora of human rights violations. The DPRK is also cited on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism and has been deemed by President Bush as a member of the “axis of evil.” On October 9, 2006, North Korea became a nuclear-weapon state, conducting its first nuclear test and raising global security concerns. In 2003, the United States along with China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea—countries with particular security concerns—established diplomatic negotiations with North Korea known as the Six-Party Talks. These ongoing talks led to an October 2007 North Korean pledge to release all information pertaining to its nuclear program and to disable all nuclear facilities under international supervision, though verification methods remain uncertain.
North Korea has not been associated with any acts of terrorism since 1987, when it was linked to the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight. However, Japan claims that North Korea bears responsibility for the abduction of several Japanese citizens, a sore point for Japan in the Six-Party Talks. North Korea’s admission to conducting a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the Agreed Framework of 1994, which prohibited such programs, raises questions about other pledges Pyongyang offers. So, too, do North Korea’s alleged frequent sales of nuclear and ballistic missile technology. In connection with concessions made in the Six-Party Talks in late 2007, the U.S. State Department said it will “begin the process of removing the designation of the DPRK as a state-sponsor of terrorism.” Although many countries see North Korea’s potential to sell nuclear technology as a threat, the more imminent concern is North Korea’s own nuclear capabilities. Consequently, much international attention is focused on North Korea’s adherence to IAEA inspections and the dismantling of its nuclear arsenal.
It has been reported that North Korea sold ballistic-missile technology to Iran and Syria, both of which are on the U.S. State department’s list of sponsors of terrorism, and Libya, which was removed from the list in 2006. North Korean missile technology has also been transferred to Pakistan and Yemen. The alleged missile sales represent a prime concern for the U.S.-led “war on terrorism,” expanding the range of receiving nations that could potentially deploy their own chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Yet the sales also generate much needed income for North Korea, allowing it to further its own military research and development. Following a September 2007 Israeli air strike in Syria, some analysts speculated that Pyongyang had sold nuclear material to Damascus, which Israel then discovered and destroyed.
North Korea finished construction on its first nuclear reactor in 1987. With a capacity of five megawatts, it is capable of producing enough uranium fuel for the creation of one nuclear bomb each year. In 1984, construction began on two more powerful reactors—one fifty megawatts, the other two-hundred. When operational, it is estimated that these reactors would be able to produce roughly thirty bombs per year. Along with these reactors, North Korea also has created a reprocessing plant which serves to extract weapons grade plutonium from nuclear fuel rods from the reactors. It has been noted that North Korea’s reactors are not being used as power plants because satellite imagery shows that there are no electric power lines coming from these facilities. Roughly three thousand scientists are working on the country’s nuclear research and development projects, but experts say it is hard to estimate the rate at which these programs are developing.
North Korea’s nuclear facilities violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which the country signed in 1985 but backed out of in April 2003. They also violate the Agreed Framework of 1994, which North Korea denounced with its nuclear test.
Many experts say North Korea has both chemical and biological weapons programs which range from the use of agents such as VX and Sarin to Anthrax and Botulin. The extent to which these agents have been weaponized is unknown as no internationally regulated inspections are conducted. The U.S. Department of Defense says that North Korea has stockpiles of chemical weapons and the capability to produce certain agents in mass quantities. North Korea has signed the Biological Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which is a multilateral effort to ban the production of biological and chemical weapons. Yet this treaty doesn’t require systematic inspections. North Korea’s ambiguous statement in October 2002 about possessing weapons more powerful than nuclear weapons has led experts to interpret this as a declaration of possessing biological/chemical weapons. Although North Korea has signed the BTWC it has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, a more recent effort to ban the production of chemical weapons and also mandating inspections.
North Korea has developed several missiles that can reach a target of up to 1,550 miles. The Nodong-1 missile is a short range missile capable of roughly 720 miles while the BM-25 is capable of 1,550 miles. It is not certain whether these missiles are in fact able to carry WMD payloads. Development has begun on a longer ranged ballistic missile Taepodong-2 which could theoretically hit a target as far as three thousand miles, almost three times the range of its predecessor, the Taepodong-1. Current North Korean missiles pose a threat to countries in East Asia, but with a completed Taepodong-2, this threat would broaden even to parts of the United States. CFR.org’s Crisis Guide on the Korean Peninsula details the North Korean military arsenal.
Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.
To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1.800.537.5487, fax +1.410.516.6998.
For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1.212.434.9516 or email publications@cfr.org.
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
The report of this bipartisan Task Force of distinguished leaders and experts represents a strong consensus on the importance of repairing America's immigration policy. It makes the case that maintaining America's political and economic leadership depends on attracting talented and hard-working immigrants, and on securing the country's borders in a smart, effective, and humane way.
This report finds that nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security in the near term, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. deterrent nuclear force, prevent nuclear terrorism, and strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
About Independent Task Forces at CFR
Complete list of Task Force reports
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
To request permission to reprint or reuse CFR material, please fill out this permissions request form (PDF), referring to the instructions on page 1.
Copyright 2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.