North Korea sent a message to the world Dec. 22 by confirming that it had removed both seals and monitoring cameras from its Yongbyon nuclear facility. No one yet seems to know what that message was meant to convey.
"The issue, ultimately, comes down to the intentions of this xenophobic regime," said Stephen Sloan, OU presidential professor of national security and international terrorism.
North Korea's expulsion of international inspectors could allow scientists to access spent fuel rods from the facility undetected. Those fuel rods could potentially be reprocessed into nuclear weapons-grade plutonium.
The current situation has been compared to a similar incident in 1994, which resulted in North Korea freezing its nuclear operations in exchange for favorable trade agreements and fuel oil from the United States and allied nations.
The recent rise in tensions began when North Korea revealed in October that it had been involved in efforts to produce nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium. In response to the violation of the 1994 agreement, the United States and allies cut off shipments of fuel oil.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il's exact intentions have been quite ambiguous to the United States and allies.
"Clearly, short-term, (Jong-Il) is trying to get that kind of funding to help subsidize the military regime, which is hanging on in terms of sheer military power and coercive capabilities," Sloan said. "Longer term, they use the nuclear threat to achieve a level of significance in the region."
Renee de Nevers, assistant professor of international and area studies, said the United States may have backed itself into a corner with its policy of not submitting to blackmail.
"One way to think about it is buying them off cheap instead of allowing weapons into the hands of terrorists," she said. "The argument against it is that other countries will do the same. The reality is that not many countries are in that position."
On the international stage, pride and morality must often take a back seat to peacekeeping efforts, she said.
North Korea currently possesses enough short-range ballistic missiles for a significant attack on South Korea that could result in as much as half a million Korean and American casualties, military officials predicted.
Several theories have been offered to explain the North Korean leader's push toward nuclear brinkmanship.
Aside from coercing financial aid from other nations, the nuclear buildup could also be used as a bargaining chip with the United States.
Other theories tend to focus on the Bush administration's rhetoric, which places North Korea in the "axis of evil," as President George W. Bush labeled it in his 2002 State of the Union address. Some experts believe U.S. military action, combined with its anti-Korean sentiment, may have led North Koreans to feel as if they were backed into a corner and their only recourse for defense is to build a nuclear arsenal.
hello there & you too