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Enhancing U.S. Engagement with North Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Joel S. Wit
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The 2006 stalemate at the six-party talks, coming after North Korea's missile tests and its first nuclear detonation, was a sign that U.S. policy was failing. Hamstrung by bureaucratic bickering, unable to build a cohesive multilateral coalition in support of its efforts, and unwilling to engage in serious negotiations with Pyongyang, Washington faced the real prospect of a North Korea armed with a small but growing nuclear deterrent. The Bush administration said that it would never accept a nuclear North Korea, but because of its policies, it seemed to have no choice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , March 2007 , e13
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

Notes

1. “North Korea Is a Regional Problem While Iran Is a Global Issue,” Straits Times, November 29, 2006.

2. Mitchell Reiss, “A Nuclear-Armed North Korea: Accepting the ‘Unacceptable‘?” Survival 48, no. 4 (Winter 2006–07): 97–109.

3. David S. Cloud and Jay Solomon, “North Korea Says It Is Developing Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2002, p. A3; George Gedda, “North Korea Has Illegal Nuclear Arms Program; Nation Acknowledges Secret Work That Violates Treaty, U.S. Says,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 17, 2002, p. A1.

4. David Albright and Paul Brannan, “The North Korean Plutonium Stock Mid-2006,” June 26, 2006, p. 10.

5. “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks,” September 19, 2005.

6. Chinese official, interview with author, Beijing, October 2005.

7. See Dianne E. Rennack, “North Korea: Economic Sanctions,” CRS Report for Congress, RL31696, October 17, 2006.

8. U.S. official, interview with author, Washington, D.C., November 2005.

9. Ibid.

10. Arnold Kanter, “North Korean Missile Launches and Implications for U.S. Policy,” PacNet, no. 35A (July 21, 2006).

11. Robert Carlin, presentation, “North Korea: 2007 and Beyond,” Washington, D.C., September 14, 2006.

12. Participant in six-party talks, interview with author, Beijing, December 2006.

13. Bob Woodward, Bush At War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 340; Warren Strobel, “U.S. Acting Tough With N. Korea,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 21, 2003, p. A2; Glenn Kessler, “Cheney Wields Power With Few Fingerprints,” Washington Post, October 5, 2004, p. A1.

14. Kim Kook-shin, “U.S. Mid-term Election Results and Prospects for North Korean Policy,” Korean Institute for National Unification Online Series, no. CO 06-14 (E) (November 2006).

15. Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, “Prospects for Ending North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program,” October 19, 2006.

16. Reiss, “Nuclear-Armed North Korea,” p. 101.

17. Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, “U.S.-D.P.R.K. Joint Communique,” October 12, 2000 (hereinafter “U.S.-D.P.R.K. Joint Communique”).

18. “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks.”

19. Ibid.

20. “U.S.-D.P.R.K. Joint Communique.”

21. Participant in six-party talks, interview with author, Beijing, December 20, 2006.

22. Mari Yamaguchi, “U.S., North Korea Financial Experts Meet,” Associated Press, December 19, 2006.

23. See Joel S. Wit, Dan Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).

24. Ibid., p. 258.

25. Reiss, “Nuclear-Armed North Korea,” p. 102.

26. “Roh: U.S. Wrecked Hopes of Nuclear Deal With North Korea,” ABS-CBN Interactive, December 26, 2006.

27. U.S. expert, interview with author, New York City, December 2006.

28. See Leon V. Sigal, “Building a Peace Regime in Korea: An American View,” International Journal of Korean Unification Studies 15, no. 1 (2006): 30–52.

29. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, p. 340.

30. “U.S. Senator Seeks 10 Billion Dollars for North Korean Human Crisis,” Agence France-Presse, November 15, 2006.

31. Brad Babson, e-mail exchange with author, December 2006.

32. See Joel S. Wit, Jon Wolfsthal, and Choongsuk Oh, “The Six Party Talks and Beyond: Cooperative Threat Reduction and North Korea,” December 16, 2005.

33. Emma Chanlett-Avery, “North Korea's Nuclear Test: Motivations, Implications, and U.S. Options,” CRS Report for Congress, RL33709, October 24, 2006, p. 2.

34. Brent Scowcroft and Daniel Poneman, “Confront North Korea,” Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2006, p. A12; Heejin Koo, “U.S. Should Hold Talks With N. Korea, Armitage Says,” Bloomberg.com, December 22, 2006.

35. Henry Kissinger, “The Next Steps With Iran; Negotiations Must Go Beyond Nuclear Threats to Broader Issues,” Washington Post, July 31, 2006, p. A15.

36. “Americans Believe U.S. International Strategy Has Backfired,” Worldpublicopinion.org, December 6, 2006.

37. Cable News Network Poll, Opinion Research Corporation, October 13–15, 2006; Princeton Survey Research Associates International/Newsweek Poll, October 2006; Washington Post-ABC News Poll: Social Security and Iraq, March 15, 2005 (data pro¬vided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut).