Citation:
Abstract:
American foreign policy toward the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) faces the problem of how to engage peacefully with a country that wants economic "tribute" but prefers self–protective isolation to the ideological risks of wider involvement in the world community. While the DPRK has accepted U.N. World Food Program (WFP) famine aid and has agreed to the construction of the two nuclear power plants, it rejects reliance on foreign trade and investment as too intrusive. In the 1994 Agreed Framework with the U.S., the DPRK traded its graphite nuclear plant for construction of the two light water reactor (LWR) power plants in a remote and thinly populated coastal area. (The graphite nuclear plant as a by–product converts uranium into weapons grade plutonium, while the LWR nuclear plants convert uranium into a less–fissile form of plutonium.)