Noncompliance with the IAEA Safeguards
North Korea’s attempt to extract weapons-grade plutonium and develop nuclear weapons, stretching over two decades, has undermined the credibility and reliability of the NPT-IAEA regime and the UNSC. North Korea successfully frustrated the IAEA’s verification efforts and evaded the IAEA safeguards. After the DPRK submitted its initial report to the IAEA in May 1992 under the IAEA-DPRK safeguards agreement, ad hoc inspec-tions by IAEA to verify Pyongyang’s statement began. Shortly thereafter inconsistencies emerged between the North’s initial declaration and the agency’s findings. The mismatch suggested that there existed undeclared plutonium in North Korea. In February 1993 the IAEA Director General invoked the “special inspection” procedure and requested the North to accept that inspection to clarify the inconsistency.1 The DPRK refused the request. In April 1993 the IAEA Board of Governors concluded that the DPRK was in noncompliance with the IAEA-DPRK safeguards agreement and referred this noncompliance to the UNSC. In May 1993 the Security Council adopted Resolution 825 calling upon the DPRK to comply with its safeguards agreement,2 but it was to no avail. The special inspection did not take place.
Theoretically, under the NPT, a state-party to the treaty can develop sensitive nuclear technologies (e.g., technologies for uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel) in a way that does not infringe the letter of the NPT, and then withdraw from the NPT to acquire weapons-grade nuclear materials and weaponize them as a non-party. Though this loophole is one important weakness of the NPT, North Korea did not exploit this shortcoming. What North Korea did was to repeatedly defy the IAEA authority and to violate the IAEA-DPRK comprehensive safeguards agreement. The failure of the IAEA and the UNSC to make Pyongyang compliant with nonproliferation obligations has generated a serious cred-ibility and reliability problem for the NPT-IAEA regime.
North Korea’s Withdrawal from the NPT and Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons
Another challenge North Korea has posed to the reliability of the NPT is its trouble-free withdrawal from the NPT. On 12 March 1993 North Korea, rejecting IAEA’s request for a special inspection, announced its decision to withdraw from the NPT. The DPRK is the first state-party to announced departure from the treaty,3 though it later put the withdrawal on hold.4
Like many other international treaties, the NPT contains a withdrawal clause, which stipulates that any state-party to the treaty has the right to withdraw if it decides that “extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”5 The clause requires the withdrawing state to “give notice of such withdrawal” not only to all other parties to the NPT but also to the UNSC three months in advance with a statement of its reasons for withdrawal. This provision is intended to give the Security Council an opportunity to deal with any withdrawal that may bring about a threat to international peace and security.
In May 1993, two months after North Korea’s declaration of withdrawal from the NPT, the UNSC adopted Resolution 825, calling upon the DPRK to “reconsider the announcement” of withdrawal and to “reaffirm its com-mitment to the Treaty.”6 But the resolution did not make reference to any sanctions if North Korea failed to comply with the Security Council nor decided whether Pyongyang should be permitted to withdraw from the NPT.
On 10 January 2003 the NPT-noncompliant DPRK announced an immediate withdrawal from the NPT by revoking the June 1993 “suspen-sion” on the effectuation of its withdrawal from the NPT.7 However, no agreed statement on the matter was issued by the UNSC. The UNSC simply expressed its “concern” over the situation in North Korea and said it would keep following developments there.8 The UNSC’s inaction allowed North Korea to continue with its nuclear weapons program, and on 10 February 2005 North Korea announced the possession of nuclear weapons. It was not until October 2006 that the Security Council responded with penalties to Pyongyang’s withdrawal from the NPT and its illicit nuclear weapons program by adopting Resolution 1718,9 enacting a variety of multilateral nonmilitary sanctions. Resolution 1718 was largely motivated by Pyong-yang’s first nuclear test conducted on 9 October 2006. Nonetheless, as North
23 Korea’s behavior thereafter shows, neither the Security Council’s sanctions mandated by Resolution 1718, nor the additional Resolutions 1874 (June 2009) and 2087 (January 2013) were successful in compelling Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and return to the NPT.
One important reason for the insufficient level of the UNSC sanctions can be found in China’s half-hearted support for the punishments against Pyongyang. For geopolitical reasons North Korea’s only ally China consis-tently prioritized North Korea’s political stability—in practical terms, the survival of the regime—over its denuclearization. Therefore, before UNSC Resolution 2094 (March 2013), China tried to dilute and soften the contents of UN sanctions, sometimes hinting it might employ its veto power, for fear that severe economic and other nonmilitary punishments might destabilize North Korea. Considering that the UNSC already declared in January 1992 that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is a threat to international peace and security,10 China should have been more in line with the other Security Council members in punishing the DPRK’s violations of the NPT system and its illicit nuclear weapons development.
Owing to the lack of effective countermeasures against Pyongyang’s non-compliance with the IAEA-DPRK safeguards agreement and withdrawal from the NPT, North Korea succeeded in fabricating primitive nuclear explosive devices and has been able to work toward smaller and lighter nuclear warheads that can be mated with its ballistic missiles.11 The case of the DPRK reveals vividly the deficiencies and weakness of the NPT-IAEA regime and also the UNSC, which often suffers from divisive geopolitical interests among the permanent members. Pyongyang’s actions may have set a precedent that will further erode the current nuclear nonproliferation regime. Other NPT non-nuclear states in similar situations may calculate that, as Pyongyang has done, they can endure the political and economic costs incurred by their own potential pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Fueling Nuclear Proliferation
Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program has provided cash-hungry North Korea with chances to earn hard currency by exporting nuclear materials and technologies for producing weapons-grade nuclear materials, thereby fostering nuclear proliferation worldwide. It is reported that North Korea
North korea’s nuclear development
supplied in 2000 about 1.7 tons of uranium hexafluoride to Libya.12 Simi-larly, the DPRK allegedly assisted Syria’s covert nuclear reactor program.13 Pyongyang’s record of transferring nuclear materials and technology to nuclear aspirants constitutes a direct threat to the NPT regime.