U.S. Sabotage of Energy Agreement with North Korea

Korea International War Crimes Tribunal, June 23, 2001, New York
Report on US Crimes in Korea 1945-2001

27. U.S. Sabotage of Energy Agreement
with North Korea

Brian Becker and Sharon Ayling
International Action Center (www.iacenter.org )

March 9, 2000

The people in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea are in the midst of a severe power and energy shortage that is adversely affecting the overall economic life of the country.

The energy shortage, mainly in electrical power, has caused major problems in heating and lighting, railway transport and agricultural production.

The DPRK's energy crisis has a variety of causes. The single biggest reason, however, has been the deliberate sabotage by the United States government of the 1994 Framework Agreement that the DPRK signed with the U.S.

The Framework Agreement stipulated that the DPRK would freeze the construction of a nuclear power plant operated by a graphite-moderated reactor. The Clinton administration nearly went to war to force the cancellation of the planned power plant, which the administration asserted would have allowed the DPRK to also produce weapons-grade plutonium necessary to build nuclear weapons.

In return for Korea freezing its nuclear power plant construction, the United States was to take the lead in building in the DPRK two light-water reactors not capable of producing nuclear weapons materials. These substitute nuclear power plants were to be the alternative energy source for the country.

In addition, the U.S. committed itself to shipping 500,000 tons of oil annually to the DPRK until the light-water reactors were up and running. The U.S. also pledged to ease and then end the economic sanctions on the DPRK that have been in place for more than half a century against this small country with a population of 20 million.

Clinton double-cross

The DPRK complied, but the United States has not lived up to its side of the agreement.

In fact, construction has not even started on the light-water reactors. Due to be completed by 2003 according to the 1994 agreement, the substitute power plant may not be operational until 2010 or even later.

The leaders of the DPRK are now waging a campaign to demand that the U.S. implement its side of the 1994 agreement. They are also insisting that the U.S. pay complete compensation for the damages and hardships imposed on the Korean people by its refusal to abide by its signed promises.

This is the backdrop for upcoming high-level negotiations to be held in Washington in March between the Clinton administration and a delegation from the DPRK.

Imperialism's miscalculation

DPRK officials say they suspect that the Clinton administration is playing a diplomatic game and never intends to fully implement the agreement. When the U.S. government signed the 1994 agreement with the DPRK, it was evidently convinced that the socialist government in the DPRK would fall within a few years-well before the 2003 deadline to finish the light-water reactors.

After the governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were overthrown in 1989-1991, the DPRK was deprived of major trading partners. The Soviet Union had been the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. It was a source of oil and energy resources for the DPRK and Cuba on terms far more favorable than those imposed by the imperialist oil monopolies.

This blow to the DPRK was worsened by four consecutive years of very bad weather, including years of drought followed by torrential rains and floods. Further complicating the picture was the unexpected death in 1995 of Kim Il Sung, who was both the president of the DPRK and the founder and leading figure of the Workers Party of Korea.

This combination of factors plunged the DPRK into its most difficult period since the Korean War of 1950-53, when U.S. bombers leveled every building above one story in the country.

Throughout the first half of the 1990s, U.S. imperialism was gloating that the DPRK would soon be overthrown. But to the amazement of the Clinton administration, the DPRK has endured.

The Workers Party of Korea carried out a smooth transition in leadership. Kim Jong Il became head of the party after the death of Kim Il Sung, the much revered leader of the Korean revolution. There were no severe splits or cleavages inside the Workers Party of Korea of the type that had prompted the collapse of governments in the USSR and Eastern Europe.

Instead of rejecting socialism, the Workers Party of Korea announced its deep commitment to socialism and the eventual transition to communism. Although it faced devastating shortages and production declines, the course pursued by the DPRK was entirely different from what had taken place in the former Soviet Union during the 1990s, when millions of workers were summarily fired, laid off, and deprived of housing and health care services after the Soviet government was overthrown.

In the DPRK, the workers and farmers are upheld as the masters of society. Without glossing over the widespread material hardships imposed by the loss of the Soviet bloc and U.S.-sponsored economic sanctions, the leadership of the DPRK refuses to embrace the so-called miracle of the capitalist market.

The Clinton administration was hoping that North Korea would go the way of East Germany, which was "peacefully" swallowed up by West German capitalism after the ruling socialist party split into warring factions in 1989.

While it did everything it could to intensify the economic problems caused by the collapse of the USSR and other socialist countries, the U.S. was banking on provoking a split inside the Workers Party of Korea, with one faction favoring an accommodation with Western capitalism in return for trade and investment.

But imperialism's wishes have been frustrated. Instead, the DPRK has maintained its party unity and a militant determination to resist imperialism while defending its sovereignty and independence.

To the great surprise of the United States, the DPRK, using its own technology, succeeded in launching a satellite into orbit in 1998. The U.S. insisted at the time that this was actually the launch of a medium-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload. A veritable storm of protest was whipped up against the DPRK that lasted for months in the United States and Japan.

The DPRK leaders in 1998 struck a defiant tone. They insisted that they had launched a satellite, but pointedly noted that the rocket could also have launched a missile and that U.S. imperialism was not the only country entitled to possess advanced rocket technology and weaponry.

Trying to bully the DPRK had backfired. The hysteria against the DPRK subsided after a few months and the U.S. quietly acknowledged that Pyongyang had indeed launched a satellite and not a missile.

The DPRK also denounced U.S. footdragging on the 1994 agreement and suggested it was being forced to resume its earlier nuclear program. It was only then that the United States announced it wanted to get the negotiations back on track.

U.S. must pay compensation

If the U.S. fails to move quickly to compensate Korea for its failure to implement the 1994 agreement, the Korean peninsula may experience a new wave of tensions, including the possibility of military hostilities.

"Never before in the history of Korea has there been such a power shortage as today," reported the KCNA, the official news agency of the DPRK, on Feb. 23.

"The DPRK's freezing of nuclear-power based construction has brought an enormous loss to it amounting to tens of billions of dollars. The light-water reactors will probably not be finished by 2010, though the initial plan called for completion by 2003," says the KCNA statement.

At the upcoming negotiations in Washington, the DPRK representatives will be demanding U.S. compensation for its energy losses, the end of economic sanctions, the immediate withdrawal of 40,000 U.S. troops from south Korea, and the end of U.S.-South Korean military war maneuvers that constantly threaten the DPRK.

U.S. imperialism has made the destruction of the socialist government in North Korea an ongoing priority. It is an integrated strategy combining war threats, sanctions and subversion. Washington's decision to restart negotiations is a result of the steadfastness and military strength of the DPRK and nothing more. Negotiations are not a sign that the U.S. rulers have changed their objectives in regard to Korea.

Progressive people in the United States must join with the Korean people in demanding that the U.S. government live up to the 1994 agreement. Certainly the U.S. should be required to pay compensation for the hardships imposed by its double-dealing refusal to provide a substitute power plant. Those who deprive people of food, medicine and heat as part of a political war against socialism should be held accountable.

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS