Replies

Here is a very short list of nonsense about North Korea that should be thrown back in the face of their authors with a resounding, “told you so!”

I look upon this, this commitment by Kim Il Sung as being very important,"
Jimmy Carter
June 15, 1994 after negotiating a deal with North Korea in which Pyongyang confirms its willingness to "freeze" its nuclear weapons program and resume high-level talks with the United States.

(“Axis of Evil”) was very understandable as a rhetorical device to rally the American people to cause against terrorism and to the cause against weapons of mass destruction, which none of us want. What I think was wrong about it in terms of North Korea is North Korea has negotiated successfully with us.

We have a 1994 framework agreement that stops the production of fissile material, which is the plutonium, the kind of plutonium needed to build nuclear weapons. They agreed to that framework agreement.
Wendy Sherman
The NewsHour
Feb. 20, 2002

It has been six years since his father has died. He is in charge of what is called kind of a hermit kingdom. And we had... he listened very carefully. He didn't lecture me. I went through all my talking points with him. And he gave rational answers. And he seems pragmatic. I made a big point of saying that these glasses that I have are not rose-colored. And I've spent my whole life studying communist systems, so I know what we're dealing with. But I think it's really worth exploring.
Madeline Albright
The PBS NewsHour
Oct. 30, 2000

The June 1994 crisis was a turning point in American nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. For three years the United States had tried to coerce North Korea into halting its nuclear arming, and failed. Then it tried cooperation and succeeded. It was a triumph of Track II diplomacy.
Leon V. Sigal
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

The second error in current U.S. policy toward the DPRK is misinterpretation. The Bush administration believes that North Korea poses a direct threat to the United States. Like the previously touted Soviet menace, the North Korean threat is inflated.
John Feffer
“Bush Policy Undermines Progress on Korean Peninsula"
Foreign Policy

George Bush is on the verge of making a big foreign policy blunder. Instead of running with the Clinton policy on North Korea, the Bush team appears to be fumbling the hand-off. At the meeting, Bush accused North Korea of not adhering to agreements. When pressed by journalists, he was unable to give details. North Korea has predictably bristled at the new hard line. U.S.-North Korean relations could quickly degenerate into rhetorical one-upmanship.
John Feffer
The Progressive Media Project