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North Korea The United States
Since 1945 North Korea's relationship with the United States
has been marked by almost continuous confrontation and mistrust.
North Korea views the United States as the strongest imperialist
force in the world and as the successor to Japanese imperialism.
The Korean War only intensified this perception. The United
States views North Korea as an international outlaw. The uneasy
armistice that halted the intense fighting of the Korean War has
occasionally been broken. Perpetuating the mutual distrust was
North Korea's 1968 seizure of the United States Navy
intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo, the downing of a
United States reconnaissance plane in 1969, and the 1976 killing
of two American soldiers at the P'anmunjm "Peace Village" in the
middle of the DMZ. North Korea's assassination of several United
States-educated South Korean cabinet officials in 1983 and the
terrorist bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987 likewise has
reinforced United States perceptions of North Korea as unworthy
of having diplomatic or economic ties with the United States.
Following South Korea's lead, the United States in 1988
launched its own modest diplomatic initiative. Washington sought
to reduce P'yongyang's isolation and to encourage its opening to
the outside world. Consequently, the United States government
began facilitating cultural, scholarly, journalistic, athletic,
and other exchanges with North Korea. After a hesitant start, by
the early 1990s almost monthly exchanges were occurring in these
areas between the two nations, a halting but significant movement
away from total estrangement.
The atmosphere between P'yongyang and Washington warmed
significantly in 1991 and 1992. The United States supported the
simultaneous admission of both Koreas into the UN in September
1991. That same month, President George Bush announced the
withdrawal of all tactical nuclear weapons worldwide. In January
1992, after North Korea had publicly committed itself to the
signing of a nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA and to
permitting IAEA inspections of its primary nuclear facility at
Yngbyn, President Bush and South Korean president Roh Tae Woo
took the unprecedented step of cancelling their 1992 joint annual
military exercise Team Spirit.
In February 1992, United States Department of State Under
Secretary for Political Affairs Arnold Kanter met with his North
Korean counterpart, Korean Workers' Party Director for
International Affairs Kim Yong-sun, in New York. At this meeting,
the United States set forth the steps it wanted North Korea to
take prior to normalization of relations. North Korea had to
facilitate progress in the North-South Korea dialogue; end its
export of missile and related technology; renounce terrorism;
cooperate with accounting for all Korean War United States
military personnel classified as Missing in Action; demonstrate
increasing respect for human rights; and conclude a credible and
effective North-South nuclear inspection regime designed to
complement inspections conducted by the IAEA. Once a credible and
effective bilateral North-South Korean inspection regime has been
implemented, the United States government will initiate a policy
level dialogue with North Korea to formulate specifics for
resolving other outstanding United States concerns.
Data as of June 1993
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