If a North Korean nuclear attack happened

[Dill]

(08-12-2017, 11:19 AM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Settled their own affairs how? By letting the North take the South by force? 

But North Korea was not completely upfront in all of this Dill.

In May of 1992 the nuclear declarations from North Korea was submitted to the IAEA which declared seven plutonium sites that could be subject to IAEA inspection and the IAEA conducted inspections to verify that the declarations were correct. Four months later in September, the IAEA asked North Korea to clarify issues regarding their nuclear activities because the IAEA discovered discrepancies in North Korea's initial report on it's nuclear program, issues which included the amount of reprocessed plutonium that North Korea had.. 

The following year in February 1993, the IAEA became highly suspicious of what North Korea was doing and demanded special inspections of two North Korean sites that the IAEA believed was being used to store nuclear waste because they had found what they said was "strong evidence" of North Korean misconduct. North Korea received the IAEA's request and subsequently denied them entry to the two sites. Barely even a month later North Korea announced that they were going to pull out of the non-proliferation treaty. After this announcement the IAEA declared that North Korea was not complying with their agreement and that their nuclear activities were unverifiable because they were denied entry to their facilities.

After talks with the United States, North Korea suspended it's decision to pull out of the treaty and decided to negotiate with the IAEA. The next year in March of 1994, North Korea agreed and allowed the IAEA to inspect their facilities. However, the inspectors were not allowed to fully inspect their facilities in accordance to the agreement, and the IAEA demanded that the North Koreans allow them to inspect their facilities to the fullest extent of their agreement.

About two months later in May, the IAEA reported that North Korea had discharged the fuel in their 5 Megawatt Nuclear Reactors before inspector's were able to get there in time, and because of the way that they discharged the fuel, it had become impossible for the IAEA to verify how the reactors were used and for how many years. As a response, the Board of Governors of the IAEA announced in June that North Korea was continuing to distance themselves in their agreement by not fully complying with the IAEA's inspection requests and were deliberately taking actions that prevented the IAEA from completing meaningful research on their facilities. Three days later North Korea withdrew from the agreement.

I know you want to harp on the Bush administration but the Bush administration only acted on what the Clinton administration had already picked up on, and that's that the North Koreans were doing some shady nuclear activities for years but it was impossible to determine what exactly they were doing because they repeatedly denied inspectors access to their facilities. Sure, the North Koreans are scared of us, but I think we need to be careful in framing what they are doing as "defensive" activities. Clearly North Korea has more in mind than preventing a US invasion.

Just a quick note on this Matt. (I am traveling and not regularly online.)
I am aware of the difficulties you refer to above. But you are describing activities prior to Clinton's Agreement. No one has any doubt that NK would push boundaries AFTER the agreement as well, but the agreement was made knowing that would be managed.

 But it's pretty hard to call that kettle black when NK immediately set to work adhering to the Agreement and the US did not. E.g. NK did destroy its heavy water reactor as requested and got the sites prepared for the building of the light water reactors. In other words, they took A GIANT STEP BACK in quest for a nuclear weapon on the assumption the US would come through with the other energy sources. Then the US and allies simply dragged their feet. Clinton was hoping that there would be regime change after the death of grandad Kim. But there was not. And the Gingrich Congress was interfering as much as possible as well, refusing to fund or dragging its feet on necessary appropriations.

So it cannot be said Bush "picked up on something." They knew very well that NK had set its program back a decade in exchange for the energy technology. They were looking for any pretext to break the deal (just as Trump is doing with Iran right now). From the NK perspective, the US basically tricked NK into destroying its nuclear program, then stalled and refused to hold up its end of the bargain.

Whenever you are looking into US deals with "evil" states, you have to look extra closely at what as going on, ESPECIALLY when the president (whomever) and State Department start talking about how untrustworthy the other side is. Too often they simply count on voters to buy the administration's version of events. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was not a one off, but an excellent example of how US public opinion is continually managed by administrations who deploy the they-can't-be-trusted strategy. Think of how Bush played Congress for his Iraq authorization.