Review U.S. policy toward North Korea

„While the United States has stood aside, hoping time and circumstances would force North Korea to accede to demands for denuclearization, the North has forged ahead with its own plans. Near-universal skepticism greeted Pyongyang's announcement last year that it intended to build a light-water reactor and perfect enrichment technology to fuel it. Not two weeks ago, while visiting the nuclear center at Yongbyon during a four-day trip to North Korea, we saw that the North had begun construction of a light-water reactor that could generate 25 to 30 megawatts of electric power.

Even more important, we were taken to see a small, industrial-scale centrifuge-based uranium enrichment plant. The facility - which has more than 2,000 centrifuges - appeared well-built. It looked to contain modern equipment. The North Koreans were short on details but told us that the centrifuges were not P1 models. They said that the site was recently finished and that it was operating (a fact we could not verify from where we stood). It was meant to produce low-enriched uranium to fuel the reactor they have yet to complete, they said. Efforts to obtain light-water reactors from abroad for much-needed electricity had failed, they emphasized, so they had no choice but to make their own.

News of the North's program will spark critics to warn that negotiations have proved worthless and that only increased international pressure can produce results. But those very arguments helped put us in this policy dilemma. Debates over whether U.S. policy or North Korean actions are to blame can wait. What is needed, right away, is a thorough review of the past 16 years of engagement with Pyongyang, analysis of the facts as we best know them and an honest assessment of the options.”