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For almost 20 years after the 1950-53 Korean War, relations between North and South Korea were minimal and very strained. Official contact did not occur until in 1971, beginning with Red Cross contacts and family reunification projects in 1985. In the early 1990s, relations between both countries improved with the 1991 South-North Basic Agreement, which acknowledged that reunification was the goal of both governments, and the 1992 Joint Declaration of Denuclearization. However, divergent positions on the process of reunification, and North Korean weapons programs, compounded by South Koreaís tumultuous domestic politics and the 1994 death of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, contributed to a cycle of warming and cooling of relations between North and South. Relations improved again following the 1997 election of Kim Dae-jung. His "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the D.P.R.K. set the stage for the historic June 2000 inter-Korean summit between President Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. President Kim was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for the policy, but the prize was somewhat tarnished by revelations of a $500 million dollar "payoff" to North Korea that immediately preceded the summit. Relations again became tense following the October 2002 North Korean acknowledgement of a covert program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Following this acknowledgement, the United States, along with the Peopleís Republic of China, proposed multilateral talks among the concerned parties to deal with this issue. At the urging of China and its neighbors, the D.P.R.K. agreed to meet with China and the United States in April 2003. In August of that year, the D.P.R.K. agreed to attend Six-Party Talks aimed at ending the Northís pursuit of nuclear weapons that added the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Russia to the table. Two more rounds of Six-Party Talks between the United States, the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, and the D.P.R.K. were held in February and June of 2004. At the third round, the U.S. put forward a comprehensive proposal aimed at completely, verifiably, and irreversibly eliminating North Koreaís nuclear weapons programs. A fourth round of talks commenced in July 2005, held over a period of 20 days between July and September. All parties agreed to a Joint Statement of Principles on September 19, in which, among other things, the six parties unanimously reaffirmed the goal of verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner. In the Joint Statement, the D.P.R.K. committed to "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards." The Joint Statement also commits the U.S. and other parties to certain actions as the D.P.R.K. denuclearizes. The U.S. offered a security assurance, specifying that we had no nuclear weapons on R.O.K. territory and no intention to attack or invade the D.P.R.K. with nuclear or other weapons. The U.S. and D.P.R.K. will take steps to normalize relations, subject to the D.P.R.K.ís implementing its denuclearization pledge and resolving other longstanding concerns. While the Joint Statement provides a vision of the end-point of the Six-Party process, much work lies ahead to implement the elements of the agreement. Under President Roh Moo-hyun, the R.O.K. has simultaneously sought the elimination of the D.P.R.K.ís nuclear weapons through the Six Party Talks and pursued a policy of reconciliation known as the "Peace and Prosperity Policy." By engaging with the D.P.R.K. through projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the R.O.K. hopes to invigorate the North Korean economy and engineer a gradual, long-term unification process. |
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