Disarmament Documentation

Back to Disarmament Documentation

'The Inter-Korean Declaration On Denuclearization Of The Korean Peninsula Was...Reduced To A Dead Document': DPRK Report on Nuclear Crisis, May 12

Report on the nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsular, issued by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang, May 12; no report title or further details provided by KCNA.

Note: the report's description of the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula as "a dead document" was widely reported as an announcement by Pyongyang that it no longer considered itself bound by any commitment or obligation set out therein. The Declaration was signed by the two Koreas in January 1992.

Part I

The nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is a product of the US policy of turning South Korea into its nuclear base.

The deployment of [the] nuclear missile Honest John in South Korea by the US, obsessed by the vaulting ambition for world supremacy, in the latter half of the 1950s sparked a nuclear issue the magnitude of which was brought into bolder relief with the shipment of neutron bomb called a weapon of [the] devil in the 20th century in the first half of the 1980s.

On February 3, 1958, the US forces exhibited two 280-mm-calibre atomic guns and nuclear missiles Honest John each in the airfield of the US first army corps in the vicinity of Uijongbu to show them to mediapersons. (Orient Press, Reuters and Hapdong News Agency).

The meeting of the US House of Representatives held on May 30, 1975 to examine the defence budget for 1976 officially disclosed that at least 1,000 nuclear weapons and 54 nuclear-capable aircraft were deployed in South Korea, according to Hapdong News from Washington D.C. in June 1975.

Among the nuclear bombs shipped into South Korea were 80 nuclear warheads for missile Honest John, 192 tactical nuclear bombs for fighter-bombers, 152 nuclear shells for 155-mm-calibre howitzers and 56 nuclear shells for 8-inch howitzers, the January 1981 issue of magazine defense monitor published by the US Defense Intelligence Centre said.

The US deployed 56 neutron bombs in South Korea for an actual war the deployment of which was rejected by many countries in Europe and other areas, as well as a large number of field backpack nukes.

The magnitude of the nuclear threat posed to the DPRK increased as the South Korean "Yusin government" worked hard to develop nuclear arms.

In early 1978 when the Kori Atomic Power Plant began operation South Korea had an annual capacity of extracting 139 to 167 kg of plutonium 239 with which to make 23 to 28 20-kilo ton-class nuclear bombs.

The Brookings Institution of the US made public a report "nuclear proliferation and US diplomatic policy" on November 9, 1980 in which it said South Korea and Japan can have access to nuclear arms in ten years to come.

All the facts historically prove that the US has long massively deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea and posed a constant nuclear threat to the DPRK by instigating even South Korean hawks.

The DPRK government put into force the "joint declaration on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula" [in January 1992] in order to fundamentally settle the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula under the prevailing situation.

Part II

In November 1956, the 12th session of the first Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK clarified an official stand opposing the introduction of A-bombs to South Korea.

Such [a] just stand of the DPRK against the conversion of South Korea into a nuclear base was repeatedly manifested at sessions of the SPA, the meetings of the north-south coordinating committee and the military armistice commission and on other occasions in the 1960s and 1970s.

On Jan. 10, 1984, the Central People's Committee and the SPA Standing Committee held a joint meeting at which they adopted letters to the US government and congress and the South Korean authorities. The letters proposed tripartite talks allowing the South Korean authorities to attend the DPRK-US talks to discuss measures for removing the danger of nuclear war and providing preconditions for a peaceful settlement of the Korean issue.

In order to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and fully ensure the sovereignty of the country, the DPRK government acceded to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in December 1985 and, after its accession to the treaty, advanced many more peace proposals on its own initiative and has made every possible effort for their materialization.

In the June 23, 1986, statement it solemnly declared that it would not test, produce, store and introduce nuclear weapons nor allow the establishment of any foreign military bases, including a nuclear base, and passage of any other country's nuclear weapons through its land, air and waters.

The statement also clarified that if the US government and the South Korean authorities request any negotiations as regards the DPRK's proposalfor turning the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear-free, peace zone, the DPRK government would respond to it anytime regardless of their format.

Since the "joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" was announced on Jan. 20, 1992, the DPRK has redoubled its sincere efforts to put it into practice. Its government paid primary attention to the efforts to ensure that the documents of historic significance in removing the very source of the danger of nuclear war from the Korean Peninsula have full legal validity.

The joint meeting of the Central People's Committee and the SPA Standing Committee on Feb. 5, 1992, examined and approved the joint declaration.

This was an epochal event that provided a landmark for turning the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear-free, peace zone and reunifying the country.

As a more practical step, the 16th meeting of the Standing Committee of the ninth SPA held on Feb. 18, 1992 and the third session of the ninth SPA held in April of the same year examined, discussed and approved the proposal for ratifying the safeguards accord between the DPRK and the IAEA. As a result, the accord took effect as from April 10, 1992.

The DPRK government published a memorandum on Sept. 12, 1997, in which it disclosed the reckless nuclear arms buildup the US and the South Korean authorities pushed forward behind the curtain of the talks and strongly demanded a prompt stop to it.

In the memorandums of its Foreign Ministry, indictment of the Korean anti-nuke peace committee, and indictment of the DPRK Lawyers Committee released on March 15, 1993, April 20, 1994, January 7, 1999, and February 28, 2003, respectively the DPRK called attention to the fact that the danger of nuclear war was growing on the Korean Peninsula owing to the test nuclear war exercises of the US and the South Korean authorities and the unreasonable behavior of some quarters of the IAEA secretariat, and put forth constructive and substantial proposals to solve this issue.

A joint meeting of the government, political parties and organizations of the DPRK held on March 18, 2003 called upon all the Koreans at home and abroad to defend the sovereignty of the nation and peace of the Korean Peninsula from such growing danger of nuclear war through national cooperation.

With a view to denuclearizing the peninsula, the DPRK government opened to the world community all the nuclear activities of the DPRK for a peaceful purpose, proving the validity and integrity of its nuclear policy.

It allowed an IAEA delegation led by its general director to visit the DPRK from May 11 to 16, 1992, and inspect all its nuclear facilities they had wanted to do and any objects they had suspected.

The DPRK submitted to the IAEA its initial inventory report on nuclear material and nuclear facility designing information on May 4, 1992, far ahead of the set date, which were to be presented according to articles 42 and 62 of the safeguards accord between the DPRK and the IAEA.

The DPRK government rendered full cooperation to the IAEA's ad-hoc inspection team in its six rounds of inspection in the DPRK from May 1992 to early February 1993.

Thanks to the consistent and magnanimous efforts exerted by the DPRK government, the DPRK-US joint statement was adopted between the two countries on June 11, 1993 and the DPRK-US Agreed Framework [AF] was adopted on October 21, 1994, under which both sides committed themselves to fundamentally settle the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

Even when the US moves to scrap the AF and reduce the north-south joint declaration on denuclearization to a dead document reached its zenith after the Bush administration took office the DPRK proposed DPRK-US direct talks several times and strongly called for settling the nuclear issue by concluding a non-aggression treaty in the hope of preventing the process of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula from being derailed.

As part of its principled and patient efforts the DPRK government advanced a new bold proposal for settling the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula at the DPRK-US talks held in Beijing in April last.

Part III

Ever since the publication of the north-south joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula the US adopted it as its policy to systematically and completely ditch it and has stood in the way of its realization in every way.

In July 1992, nearly 7 months after the publication of the joint declaration, the US instigated the International Atomic Energy Agency to kick up a racket of "special inspection", thus sparking a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

Instead of withdrawing all types of nuclear weapons already stockpiled and deployed in South Korea, the US introduced many depleted uranium bombs, whose use is banned internationally, and deployed them for an actual war in February 1997.

After the emergence of the Bush administration the US hostile policy toward the DPRK reached its zenith and the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula has been derailed in actuality.

On June 6, 2001 Bush made public a "statement on North Korea policy" the keynote of which was North Korea's redoubled efforts to implement the Geneva Agreement on nuclear activities including those in the past, specified verification of missile development and cut down of conventional weapons.

On January 30, 2002, Bush in the "state of the union address" singled out the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil", a clear proof of his administration's extremely hostile policy toward the DPRK.

"Threat of North Korea's nukes and missile" claimed by the Bush administration from the outset of its office was a product of its policy to foster confrontation and war against the DPRK in a bid to torpedo the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and suffocate the DPRK.

The "report on nuclear posture" the US Defense Department worked out and submitted to Congress noted that the US forces can use nuclear weapons in case of "contingency" on the Korean Peninsula and the US should develop smaller nuclear weapons to be used for destroying underground facilities in the above-said case and to this end it should recoil from honoring the nuclear test ban treaty.(South Korean KBS, March 15, 2002).

The Bush administration has systematically and completely torpedoed the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. It finally adopted it as its policy to mount preemptive nuclear attacks on 7 countries including the DPRK in March 2002.

This was a wanton violation of the basic spirit of the NPT which calls on the nuclear weapons states to refrain from threatening other countries with nukes or using them against other countries and creating emergency cases endangering the fundamental interests of non-nuclear states and exert all efforts to avert a nuclear war.

The process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula has thus been completely derailed because the US, the world's biggest possessor of nukes, scrapped the DPRK-US joint statement and the AF and adopted it as its policy to mount a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK, a non-nuclear state, in breach of the spirit of the NPT.

The DPRK confirmed this when the special envoy of the US President visited Pyongyang early in October last. It keenly felt that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would only remain as a day dream unless the US drops its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

The inter-Korean declaration on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was thus reduced to a dead document due to the US vicious hostile policy to stifle the DPRK with nukes.

Part IV

The US incessantly staged north-targeted nuclear war exercises after turning South Korea into the biggest nuclear advance base in the Far East and a strategic nuclear weapons arsenal, thus wantonly violating the basic spirit of the joint declaration on denuclearization.

The "9-Day War Scenario", "5-Day War Scenario", "Operation Plan 5027," "Operation Plan 5027-98," war plans worked out in the 1980s and 1990s, and the recently disclosed "Contingency Plan" all specified nuclear attacks on the DPRK.

The successive US rulers and hawkish groups have been engrossed in blackmailing the DPRK with nukes on the basis of nuclear war scenarios to invade the north.

In January 1992 alone, the month when the joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was adopted, the US hurled a total of 16,000 warplanes into aerial war exercises staged in South Korea under various names. This means that it mobilized an average of over 500 warplanes a day.

Typical of the sabre rattling in the first half of the 1990s was the Team Spirit 93 Joint Military Exercise.

The reception, staging, onward movement and integration (RSOI) joint military exercise which was staged from 1994 instead of the Team Spirit was a north-targeted nuclear war exercise whose aim was to rapidly hurl overseas US troops and hardware into an actual war in case of "emergency". The RSOI has gained in scope every year.

The US staged more than 10,000 war exercises against the DPRK from the cease-fire to 1999, counting only large nuclear war exercises, and a total of 20 million troops were involved in them.

In the last more than decade after the publication of the declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula the US perpetrated more than 2,000 cases of military provocation in the sky and sea and land, actually blackmailing the DPRK with nukes.

The acts of blackmailing and threatening the DPRK with nukes became all the more undisguised after the emergence of the bush administration.

This is clearly proved by the official report that the number of war exercises staged in South Korea in 2001, the first year of the Bush administration, was double that in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration.

In March last year the Bush bellicose group staged the largest-ever nuclear war exercise against the north, a combination of RSOI and Foal Eagle. Involved in it were nearly 700,000 troops, more than three times as many as those involved in the team spirit joint military exercise staged in 1989, the biggest in its scale.

The reckless nuclear war exercises staged by the US have increased the danger of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula with each passing day and this has been one of the basic factors of derailing the process of denuclearization on the peninsula.

After the demise of the East-West Cold War, the US has escalated nuclear threats and war moves not only on the Korean Peninsula but worldwide, styling itself an "international gendarme" and the "world's only superpower." After the September 11 incident in particular, the US divided the world into good and evil by its own standards. It openly perpetrated aggression against those countries, which incur its displeasure, under the pretext of "combating terrorism" and imposed regime change there.

On March 20 this year the US provoked a war of aggression against Iraq under the pretext of "finding out weapons of mass destruction" in a bid to topple the Saddam government.

The Iraqi war taught the lesson that "nuclear suspicion," "suspected development of weapons of mass destruction" and suspected "sponsorship of terrorism" touted by the US were all aimed to find a pretext for war and one would fall victim to a war when one meekly responds to the IAEA's inspection for disarmament.

Neither strong international public opinion nor big countries' opposition to war nor the UN Charter could prevent the US from launching the Iraqi war.

It is a serious lesson the world has drawn from the Iraqi war that a war can be averted and the sovereignty of the country and the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force, a strong military deterrent force capable of decisively repelling any attack to be made by any types of sophisticated weapons.

The reality indicates that building up a physical deterrent force is urgently required for preventing the outbreak of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula and ensuring peace and security of the world, now that the US does not show any political intention and will to renounce its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

The DPRK will increase its self-defensive capacity strong enough to destroy aggressors at a single stroke. Any US aerial attack will be decisively countered with aerial attack and its land strategy will be coped with [by our] land strategy.

All these facts go to clearly prove that the US is chiefly to blame for ditching the north-south joint declaration on denuclearization and derailing the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and a cancer-like existence putting the peace and security in Korea and the rest of the world in a peril, by resorting to arbitrary practices and posing a nuclear threat and perpetrating war moves as the "world's only superpower."

The US is wholly accountable for the DPRK-US serious nuclear standoff and a nuclear war crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

The US will certainly be judged by history for derailing the process of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, going against the aspiration and desire of humankind to establish an international order for peace, progress, reconciliation and cooperation.

Source: US to blame for derailing process of denuclearisation on Korean Peninsula, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), May 12; KCNA website, http://www.kcna.co.jp.

Back to the Top of the Page

© 2003 The Acronym Institute.