For years, the United States and the international community have
tried to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile
development and its export of ballistic missile technology. Those
efforts have been replete with periods of crisis, stalemate, and
tentative progress towards denuclearization, and North Korea has long
been a key challenge for the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.
The United States has pursued a variety of policy responses to the
proliferation challenges posed by North Korea, including military
cooperation with U.S. allies in the region, wide-ranging sanctions, and
non-proliferation mechanisms such as export controls. The United States
also engaged in two major diplomatic initiatives in which North Korea to
abandon its nuclear weapons efforts in return for aid.
In 1994, faced with North Korea’s announced intent to withdraw from the nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),
which requires non-nuclear weapon states to forswear the development
and acquisition of nuclear weapons, the United States and North Korea
signed the
Agreed Framework. Under this agreement, Pyongyang committed to freezing its illicit plutonium weapons program in exchange for aid.
Following the collapse of this agreement in 2002, North Korea claimed
that it had withdrawn from the NPT in January 2003 and once again began
operating its nuclear facilities.
The second major diplomatic effort were the Six-Party Talks initiated
in August of 2003 which involved China, Japan, North Korea, Russia,
South Korea, and the United States. In between periods of stalemate and
crisis, those talks arrived at critical breakthroughs in 2005, when
North Korea pledged to abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear
programs” and return to the NPT, and in 2007, when the parties agreed
on a series of steps to implement that 2005 agreement.
Those talks, however, broke down in 2009 following disagreements over
verification and an internationally condemned North Korea rocket
launch. Pyongyang has since stated that it would never return to the
talks and is no longer bound by their agreements. The other five parties
state that they remain committed to the talks, and have called for
Pyongyang to recommit to its 2005 denuclearization pledge.
The following chronology summarizes in greater detail developments in
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and the efforts to end
them, since 1985.
Skip to:
1985,
1991,
1992,
1993,
1994,
1995,
1996,
1997,
1998,
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
2011,
2012,
2013
