The Foreign Service Journal, October 2019

24 OCTOBER 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 1985 n North Korea joins the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under Soviet pressure. 1991 n President George H.W. Bush announces that the United States has removed all nuclear weapons from South Korea, a long-held North Korean demand to agree to denuclearize. 1992 n North Korea and South Korea agree to denuclearize the peninsula. 1993 n North Korea threatens to withdraw from the NPT, but suspends withdrawal following talks with U.S. diplomats in New York. 1994 n The United States and North Korea sign the Agreed Framework, freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear program. 1999 n North Korea suspends testing of long-range missiles in exchange for U.S. easing of economic sanctions for the first time since the beginning of the KoreanWar in 1950. 2000 n June: South Korean Presi- dent Kim Dae-jung meets with DPRK President Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, the first summit between Korean leaders in five decades. 2000 n October: North Korean Gen- eral Jo Myong Rok meets with President Bill Clinton inWashington, and Secre- tary of State Madeleine Albright travels to Pyongyang to discuss the country’s ballistic missile program. 2002 n President GeorgeW. Bush challenges North Korea’s compliance with the Agreed Framework and charac- terizes the country as part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran in the State of the Union Address. 2002-2003 n The Agreed Frame- work breaks down as the United States claims North Korea admitted to running a secret uranium-enrichment program, and North Korea denies it. North Korea withdraws from the NPT. 2003 n Six-Party Talks (South and North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States) open in August. 2005 n Sept. 19: Six-Party Talks pro- duce a joint declaration in which North Korea commits to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and implement International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and the terms of the NPT in exchange for a U.S. assertion that it has no intention of attacking North Korea. 2006 n Oct. 9: North Korea conducts its first nuclear test, which prompts U.N. Security Council condemnations and trade sanctions. A low yield from the test leaves question whether North Korea could successfully detonate a nuclear device. 2007 n The six parties agree to two action plans in February and October in which North Korea commits to halting operations at Yongbyon and then start- ing to disable the reactor in exchange for a series of political, economic and energy concessions from the United States and its allies. 2008 n Pyongyang declares 15 nuclear sites and 30 kilograms of plu- tonium in June; in exchange, President GeorgeW. Bush rescinds some trade restrictions, waives some sanctions and announces a plan to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The State Department announces preliminary agreement with North Korea on verification, but discus- sions break down by December. 2009 n Pyongyang rebuffs Obama administration efforts to revive the Six-Party Talks, ejects monitors from its nuclear facilities and tests a second North Korea is roughly similar to the objective of his last three pre- decessors. Technological advancement in North Korea’s nuclear program and reordering of priorities have updated each side’s top asks and suggested a different sequencing for negotiations, but the basic outlines of a deal to address each side’s core demands have been present and explored inmultiple rounds of high-stakes diplo- macy for decades without completely resolving the fundamental issues at hand. This has led to understandable skepticism that any deal is possible and begs the question of what is new this time. The main difference between the latest diplomacy and previous rounds is the personal involvement of the two lead- ers. There is no precedent for U.S.-DPRK summitry prior to the Trump-Kim meetings, and it has created new opportunities and challenges. Contrary to prior rounds of diplomacy, there was no ambiguity about whether the Singapore Declaration reflected the position of the top leaders in both systems. At the same time, however, Chairman Kim also did not unleash his negotiators to lay out a series of quid-pro-quos that would pro- U.S.–North Korea Nuclear Negotiations: A Timeline