The South Korean Foreign Minister, Yu Myung-hwan, said on Wednesday [January 6] that North Korea apparently began pursuing a uranium enrichment program in 1996 - just two years after the 1994 Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea - in an interview with the Yonhap News Agency. Foreign Minister Yu said, "It appears that North Korea started its uranium enrichment program at least in 1996...What's clear is that the North began the enriched uranium development quite early." Yu did say, however, many things do remain unclear: "how far the program has advanced, how much enriched uranium, and how many nuclear weapons there are."
This being North Korea notwithstanding, this news is not too surprising. If the program indeed began in 1996, that means the planning and foundation work for the program has been on-going long before. It is also logical for a country to negotiate away something that it can afford to lose and have alternatives available to compensate for that loss. Oh, and of course, it should achieve maximum gain by negotiating something away. Given all this, it would only make sense North Korea traded away its nuclear program for international assistance after it already had plans in place to replace the loss internally. After all, no responsible leadership of a country relies strictly on the promise of the international community to guarantee its future.
[This almost makes North Korea seem logical and responsible, doesn't it?]
Well, for all of its faults, no one can argue that the North Korean leadership is definitely an extremely responsible and logical bunch when it comes to regime survival and domestic control.
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