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Jimmy Carter's Omission on North Korea

10:15 AM, Oct 13, 2006 • By DANIEL MCKIVERGAN
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Did anyone else notice that in Jimmy Carter's history of North Korea's nuclear program he failed to mention even once that after 1995 Pyongyang had been running a secret uranium enrichment program, a program that violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (which the North was still a party to at the time) and the 1994 Agreed Framework? Consider this from Carter's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/opinion/11carter.html target=_blank>piece:

But beginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country and to its political regime.

Responding in its ill-advised but predictable way, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, resumed processing fuel rods (see here for more on the fuel rods and the '94 deal) and began developing nuclear explosive devices.

Here's one key fact Carter left out: In October 2002, North Korea confirmed it had a secret uranium enrichment program after the Bush administration confronted the regime about the program. That December, Pyongyang kicked the IAEA inspectors out of the country. Evidently, these facts didn't fit into Carter's storyline.

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