What Went Before?
North Korea, a dictatorship armed to the teeth but unable to feed its own people without foreign aid, has specialized in provoking the international community for survival. As it has wrangled invitations to talks and extracted fresh aid, it has never given up its trump card, its nuclear weapons program.
1993>North Korea, Fighting Inspection, Renounces Nuclear Arms Treaty. North Korea, in a defiant move against international pressure to inspect its suspected nuclear weapons development program, announced this morning that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to defend "its supreme interest."
22Oct1994>U.S. and North Korea Sign Pact to End Nuclear Dispute. After almost four months of difficult negotiations, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement today to end their dispute over North Korea's nuclear program but kept secret many details of how the accord will be put into effect.
27Nov1996>North Korea Releases American It Detained for 3 Months as a Spy. A weary-looking Evan C. Hunziker, who had been detained in North Korea for three months, arrived in Tokyo today with the United States Congressman who negotiated his release.
31Aug1998>North Korea Fires Missile Over Japanese Territory. North Korea today fired a two-stage ballistic missile across Japan, which called the firing ''extremely dangerous.''
30Jan2002>Bush Focusing On Terrorism. President Bush told Americans tonight that ''our war against terror is only beginning'' and sent new warnings to terrorists around the world and to three nations -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
17Oct2002>NORTH KOREA Admits program On Nuclear Arms. Confronted by new American intelligence, North Korea has admitted that it has been conducting a major clandestine nuclear-weapons development program for the past several years, the Bush administration said tonight. Officials added that North Korea had also informed them that it has now ''nullified'' its 1994 agreement with the United States to freeze all nuclear weapons development activity.
30Aug2003>Six Nation Talks. The United States, North Korea, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan ended three days of sometimes fiery negotiations here on Friday and decided to keep talking, as Bush administration officials concluded that the diplomatic track still offered the best hope of resolving the Korean nuclear crisis.
19Sep2005>North Korea Says It Will Abandon Nuclear Efforts.North Korea agreed Monday to end its nuclear weapons program in return for security, economic and energy benefits, potentially easing tensions with the United States after a two-year standoff over the North's efforts to build atomic bombs.
05Jul2006>Missiles Fired by North Korea; Tests Protested. North Korea test-fired at least six missiles over the Sea of Japan on Wednesday morning, including an intercontinental missile that apparently failed or was aborted 42 seconds after it was launched, White House and Pentagon officials said.
09Oct2006>North Koreans Say They Tested Nuclear Device. North Korea said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states.
31Oct2006>North Korea Will Resume Nuclear Talk. North Korea agreed Tuesday to resume nuclear disarmament talks, a first sign of easing tensions since the country’s nuclear test this month. But the talks have dragged on inconclusively for three years, and the chances for rolling back the country’s now-proven nuclear capability remained uncertain.
13Feb2007>In Shift, Accord on North Korea Seems to Be Set. The United States and four other nations reached a tentative agreement to provide North Korea with roughly $400 million in fuel oil and aid, in return for the North’s starting to disable its nuclear facilities and allowing nuclear inspectors back into the country, according to American officials who have reviewed the proposed text.
27Jun2008>North Korea’s Intent in Razing Tower Is Unclear. International television crews were invited to reclusive North Korea on Friday to witness the destruction of the cooling tower at the country’s main nuclear weapons plant. Viewers around the world later watched the most visible symbol of the North’s nuclear ambitions collapse in a cloud of shattered concrete.
24Sep2008>North Koreans Bar Inspectors at Nuclear Site. North Korea’s move to resume the reprocessing of plutonium, perhaps as soon as next week, left the country on the verge of restarting a nuclear weapons program whose shutdown had been portrayed by the White House as a significant diplomatic achievement.
11Oct2008>North Korea Is Off Terror List After Deal With U.S. The Bush administration announced Saturday that it had removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in a bid to salvage a fragile nuclear deal that seemed on the verge of collapse.
19Mar2009>North Korea Said to Detain U.S. Reporters. Two American journalists on a reporting trip to the border between China and North Korea have been detained by the North Korean military, a human rights activist and another source said Thursday.
05Apr2009>North Koreans Launch Rocket Over the Pacific. North Korea defied the United States, China and a series of United Nations resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that the country said was designed to propel a satellite into space, but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.
26may2009>North Korea Is Said to Test-Fire 3 More Missiles. One day after its nuclear test drew angry and widespread condemnation, North Korea further antagonized the international community on Tuesday by test-firing three short-range missiles.
15Jun2009>U.S. to Confront, Not Board, North Korean Ships. The Obama administration will order the Navy to hail and request permission to inspect North Korean ships at sea suspected of carrying arms or nuclear technology, but will not board them by force, senior administration officials said Monday.
05Aug2009>Bill Clinton and Journalists in Emotional Return to U.S. Former President Bill Clinton arrived in the United States Wednesday morning after a dramatic 20-hour visit to North Korea, in which he won the freedom of two American journalists, opened a diplomatic channel to North Korea’s reclusive government and dined with the North’s ailing leader, Kim Jong-il.
03Sep2009>N. Korea Reports Advances in Enriching Uranium. North Korea declared Friday that it was in the “concluding stage” of tests to enrich uranium. Its statement would appear to end a decade-long debate within American intelligence agencies about whether the country was working on a second pathway to building nuclear weapons.
27Mar2010>S. Korean Navy Ship Sinks in Disputed Waters. A South Korean Navy patrol ship sank near the disputed western maritime border with North Korea early Saturday after suffering damage to its hull, South Korea’s military said.
19May2010>South Korea Publicly Blames the North for Ship’s Sinking. South Korea formally accused North Korea on Thursday of responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors, in one of the deadliest provocations since the two countries ended the Korean War in a truce in 1953.
21July2010>U.S. to Add to Sanctions on N. Korea. The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would impose further economic sanctions against North Korea, throwing legal weight behind a choreographed show of pressure on the North that included an unusual joint visit to the demilitarized zone by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
08nov2010>South Korea Drops Its Call for Apology From North. In a shift that could pave the way for new talks on the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the government in the South has quietly abandoned its demand that the North apologize for the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, no longer making that a condition for the nuclear talks or other future exchanges.
23Nov2010>‘Crisis Status’ in South Korea After North Shells Island. The South Korean military went to “crisis status” on Tuesday and threatened military strikes after the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South’s soldiers and setting off an exchange of fire in one of the most serious clashes between the two sides in decades.
