The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [145]
Under provisions of the treaty, North Korea was allowed eighteen months to negotiate and sign a safeguards (inspection) agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which conducts the inspections. In mid-1987, near the end of the eighteen-month period, the IAEA learned that it had mistakenly sent Pyongyang the wrong kind of agreement document-one designed for individual sites rather than general inspections-as a model for negotiations. Because of the error, the IAEA bureaucracy gave Pyongyang another eighteen months, but that deadline passed in December 1988 with no accord and no movement from Pyongyang. By then, North Korea's prospects for acquiring the Soviet-built power reactors-the reason why it had joined the NPT in the first place-had sharply diminished with its declining relations with Moscow and the dwindling fortunes of the Soviet economy. Yet unless North Korea was willing to make a big international stir by withdrawing from the pact, it was stuck with the treaty commitments it had made. There was little indication then, however, that the 1AEA's inspections, if North Korea were forced to endure them, would be very onerous.
NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY: THE AMERICAN WEAPONS
When the Bush administration took office in Washington in January 1989, information and concern about the North Korean nuclear program was limited to a small group of American officials with access to the satellite photographs. Although most intelligence officials had no doubt about the seriousness of the danger, a nuclear analyst at the Department of Energy suggested that the North Koreans might be building a chemical fiber factory. There was also the puzzling question of why Yongbyon was not better hidden: on a clear day the outline of the nuclear complex could be seen with the naked eye from airliners taking off and landing at Pyongyang airport. Such questions were excuses for inaction by a U.S. governmental apparatus that was anything but eager to grapple with this complex and explosive topic. "The real problem was the policymakers' reluctance to face the issue, an avoidance of reality that probably flowed from the realization of the scope and difficulty of the problem," according to a former official who dealt with it in both the Reagan and Bush administrations.
The first impulse of the Bush administration was to inform others with potential influence about what Washington's space satellites had seen rising at Yongbyon. If the North Koreans were to be stopped or even slowed, it was clear that the United States would have to gain the cooperation of the other major powers with interests in the Korean peninsula. For this reason, the chief of the State Department's Korea desk, Harry Dunlop, briefed Soviet and Chinese officials in February 1989 about the North Korean nuclear program during visits to their capitals. Later Secretary of State James Baker took up the issue repeatedly with senior officials of the two communist giants. According to Baker, "Our diplomatic strategy was designed to build international pressure against North Korea to force them to live up to their agreement to sign a safeguards agreement permitting inspections."
In May a five-member U.S. team of experts traveled to Seoul and Tokyo to provide the first extensive briefing for those governments. By then, word of the American findings was trickling out, and the State Department feared that failure to provide information could be a blow to South Korean confidence in the United States. Washington was also eager to put its own spin on the news it was imparting.
Before the briefing, an Arms Control and Disarmament Agency official wrote to her superiors, "I think the South Koreans need to be convinced that their interests would not be served by embarking on a weapons program of their own, or allowing our conclusions