Foreign relations of North Korea
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Template:Politics of North Korea
The foreign relations of North Korea are often tense and unpredictable. Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the North Korean government has largely sealed itself off from the outside world, becoming one of the world's most tightly controlled societies. Technically still in a state of war with South Korea and the United States, North Korea has maintained close relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and often tense ones with other nations. North Korea occupies the northern portion of a mountainous peninsula projecting southeast from China, between the Sea of Japan (East Sea of Korea) and the Yellow Sea. Japan lies east of the peninsula across the Sea of Japan. North Korea shares borders with the PRC along the Yalu River, and with the PRC and Russia along the Tumen River.
The Military Demarcation Line (MDL) of separation between the belligerent sides at the close of the Korean war forms North Korea's boundary with South Korea. A demilitarized zone (DMZ) extends for 2,000 meters (about 1.25 miles) on either side of the MDL. Both the North and South Korean Governments hold that the MDL is only a temporary administrative line, not a permanent border. The South Korean goverments maintains the Sunshine policy towards North Korea, often going to great lengths to avoid antagonizing the leadership of the country.
North Korea has a history of poor relations with neighboring countries. During the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea carried out abductions of citizens of Japan and South Korea. Although having since mostly resolved the issue and admitting its role in the abductions, it remains a contentious issue with the two countries. In addition, the United States accuses North Korea of counterfeiting large numbers of high quality U.S. bills.
Currently, North Korea's nuclear program is its most pressing issue in international affairs. After allegations from the United States about the continued existence of a military nuclear program in defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea admitted to the existence of uranium enrichment activities and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty on January 10, 2003. After insisting on bilateral negotiations with the United States, it agreed to six-party talks between itself, the United States, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan in August 2003. The talks continued for two years, until an agreement was reached on September 19, 2005, though it began to fall apart almost immediately.
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Reunification efforts
In August 1971, North and South Korea agreed to hold talks through their respective Red Cross societies with the aim of reuniting the many Korean families separated following the division of Korea and the Korean war. After a series of secret meetings, both sides announced on July 4, 1972, an agreement to work toward peaceful reunification and an end to the hostile atmosphere prevailing on the peninsula. Officials exchanged visits, and regular communications were established through a North-South coordinating committee and the Red Cross.
However, these initial contacts broke down and ended in 1973 following South Korean President Park Chung Hee's announcement that the South would seek separate entry into the United Nations and after the kidnapping from Tokyo of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-Jung by the South Korean intelligence service. There was no other significant contact between North and South Korea until 1984.
Dialogue was renewed on several fronts in September 1984, when South Korea accepted the North's offer to provide relief goods to victims of severe flooding in South Korea. Red Cross talks to address the plight of separated families resumed, as did talks on economic and trade issues and parliamentary-level discussions. However, the North then unilaterally suspended all talks in January 1986, arguing that the annual U.S.-South Korea "Team Spirit" military exercise was inconsistent with dialogue. There was a brief flurry of negotiations on co-hosting the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which ended in failure and was followed by the 1987 KAL flight 858 bombing.
In a major initiative in July 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae Woo called for new efforts to promote North-South exchanges, family reunification, inter-Korean trade, and contact in international forums. Roh followed up this initiative in a UN General Assembly speech in which South Korea offered for the first time to discuss security matters with the North.
Initial meetings that grew out of Roh's proposals started in September 1989. In September 1990, the first of eight prime minister-level meetings between North Korean and South Korean officials took place in Seoul, beginning an especially fruitful period of dialogue. The prime ministerial talks resulted in two major agreements: the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation (the "Basic Agreement") and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (the "Joint Declaration").
The Basic Agreement, signed on December 13, 1991, and calling for reconciliation and nonaggression established four joint commissions. These commissions--on South-North reconciliation, South-North military affairs, South-North economic exchanges and cooperation, and South-North social and cultural exchange--were to work out the specifics for implementing the general terms of the basic agreement. Subcommittees to examine specific issues were created, and liaison offices were established in Panmunjom, but in the fall of 1992, the process came to a halt because of rising tension over the nuclear issue.
The Joint Declaration on denuclearization was initialed on December 31, 1991. It forbade both sides to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons and forbade the possession of nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. A procedure for inter-Korean inspection was to be organized and a North-South Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) was mandated with verification of the denuclearization of the peninsula.
On January 30, 1992, the D.P.R.K. also signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA, as it had pledged to do in 1985 when acceding to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections to begin in June 1992. In March 1992, the JNCC was established in accordance with the joint declaration, but subsequent meetings failed to reach agreement on the main issue of establishing a bilateral inspection regime.
As the 1990s progressed, concern over the North's nuclear program became a major issue in North-South relations and between North Korea and the U.S. The lack of progress on implementation of the joint nuclear declaration's provision for an inter-Korean nuclear inspection regime led to reinstatement of the U.S.-South Korea Team Spirit military exercise for 1993. The situation worsened rapidly when North Korea, in January 1993, refused IAEA access to two suspected nuclear waste sites and then announced in March 1993 its intent to withdraw from the NPT. During the next 2 years, the U.S. held direct talks with the D.P.R.K. that resulted in a series of agreements on nuclear matters (see, under U.S. Policy Toward North Korea, U.S. Efforts on Denuclearization). During former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's 1994 visit, Kim Il Sung agreed to a first-ever North-South summit. The two sides went ahead with plans for a meeting in July but had to shelve it because of Kim's death.
Relations outside the peninsula
After 1945, the Soviet Union supplied the economic and military aid that enabled North Korea to mount its invasion of the South in 1950. Soviet aid and influence continued at a high level during the Korean war; as mentioned, the Soviet Union was largely responsible for rebuilding North Korea's economy after the cessation of hostilities. In addition, the assistance of Chinese "volunteers" during the war and the presence of these troops until 1958 gave China some degree of influence in North Korea. In 1961, North Korea concluded formal mutual security treaties with the Soviet Union (inherited by Russia) and China, which have not been formally ended. For most of the Cold War, North Korea followed a policy of equidistance between the Soviet Union and China by accepting favors from both while avoiding a clear preference for either.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the Soviet-backed Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan created strains between China and the Soviet Union and, in turn, in North Korea's relations with its two major communist allies. North Korea tried to avoid becoming embroiled in the Sino-Soviet split, obtaining aid from both the Soviet Union and China and trying to avoid dependence on either. Following Kim Il Sung's 1984 visit to Moscow, there was a dramatic improvement in Soviet-D.P.R.K. relations, resulting in renewed deliveries of advanced Soviet weaponry to North Korea and increases in economic aid.
The establishment of diplomatic relations by South Korea with the Soviet Union in 1990 and with the P.R.C. in 1992 put a serious strain on relations between North Korea and its traditional allies. Moreover, the fall of communism in eastern Europe in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in a significant drop in communist aid to North Korea. Despite these changes and its past reliance on this military and economic assistance, North Korea proclaims a militantly independent stance in its foreign policy in accordance with its official ideology of juche, or self-reliance.
At the same time, North Korea maintains membership in a variety of multilateral organizations. It became a member of the UN in September 1991. North Korea also belongs to the Food and Agriculture Organization; the International Civil Aviation Organization; the International Postal Union; the UN Conference on Trade and Development; the ITU; the UN Development Programme; the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization; the World Health Organization; the World Intellectual Property Organization; the World Meteorological Organization; the International Maritime Organization; the International Committee of the Red Cross; and the Nonaligned Movement.
In July 2000, North Korea began participating in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), as Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun attended the ARF ministerial meeting in Bangkok July 26-27. The D.P.R.K. also expanded its bilateral diplomatic ties in that year, establishing diplomatic relations with Italy, Australia, and the Philippines. The United Kingdom and Germany also have announced their intentions to establish diplomatic relations. Other countries such as France, Canada and the United States do not have formal diplomatic ties with North Korea and have not announced any intention to have any (North Korea however maintains a delegation, not an embassy, near Paris).
North Korea was named as a member of both the "axis of evil" and the "outposts of tyranny," lists created by the United States naming states it felt threatened world peace and human rights.
North Korea declared on February 10, 2005 that it has nuclear weapons, bringing widespread expressions of dismay and near-universal calls for the North to return to the six-party negotiations aimed at curbing its nuclear program. On May 14, South Korea announced that at the north's request to the Ministry of Unification, the two countries would resume after almost a year on May 16, in the border city of Kaesong.
Drug trafficking and counterfeiting
In March 2003 North Korea's long suspected revenue-raising exercise of narcotics exportation was highlighted with the Australian seizure of the Pong Su.
North Korea's counterfeiting operations have resulted in large numbers of high-quality fakes entering into circulation. In 1994, several North Koreans were arrested in Macao for depositing $250,000 in counterfeit U.S. bills in a bank. According to The Economist, a news magazine, North Korea prints $100 million in fake dollars each year.<ref>Wortzel, Larry M. North Korea's Connection to International Trade in Drugs, Counterfeiting, and Arms. The Heritage Foundation. URL accessed on February 22, 2006.</ref>
Terrorism
North Korea has committed several terrorist acts in its history, the last being the inflight bombing of KAL 858 in 1987. The country has made several statements condemning terrorism. Most recently, on October 6, 2000, the U.S. and North Korea issued a Joint Statement in which "the two sides agreed that international terrorism poses an unacceptable threat to global security and peace, and that terrorism should be opposed in all its forms." The U.S. and North Korea agreed to support the international legal regime combating international terrorism and to cooperate with each other to fight terrorism. Pyongyang continues to provide sanctuary to members of the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction who participated in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines flight to North Korea in 1970. Relations with Japan have also long been strained by the abduction of Japanese students during the 1970s and 1980s for intelligence purposes.
International disputes
33-km section of boundary with China in the Baitou Mountain (Paektu-san) area is indefinite; Demarcation Line with South Korea
Diplomacy
North Korea is one of the few countries in which the giving of presents still plays a significant role in diplomatic protocol, as it once did with monarchs and chieftains. The Korean Central News Agency regularly reports that Kim Jong-il has received a floral basket or gift from a foreign leader or organization.[1] The announcements never mention what sort of gift, but Kim is known to have a large collection of cultural souvenirs from leaders all over the world. During a 2000 visit to Pyongyang, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave Kim a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, as Kim takes an interest in NBA basketball.
North Korea's diplomacy with the United States and Japan is marked by frequent dire warnings (through KCNA) about its military capabilities. It regards seemingly minor statements and actions in those countries as declarations of renewed war, and responds by threatening to turn Korea into a "sea of fire" by firing its artillery along the DMZ at Seoul.
References
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