In 1999 the news on North Korea was both alarmist over North Korean antics and naively hopeful of peace suddenly breaking out. A decade later the news is still often alarmist - North Korea did test a nuclear device in 2006 after all - but less naive after decade of reneging on agreements and snubbing even those trying to help the regime. I happened to have spent almost the entire year of 1999 in South Korea, closely watching these events.

In January 1999, there was worry that, “one of President Clinton’s major foreign policy successes,” the 1994 Agreed Framework (ha!), was in danger due to a suspicion North Korea was secretly developing nuclear weapons. This “crisis” prompted a review of America’s North Korea policy by then Secretary of Defense William Perry (see info on the Perry Report below).

Hyundai announced it would invest $397 million in North Korea to develop a tourist resort Kumgang, on the east coast of North Korea. This was of course before the half billion dollar payoff it made for the June 2000 summit between Kim Jong-il and ROK President Kim Dae-jung. When I was at the east coast unification observatory in September 2008, the booth for travel to Mt. Kumgang was closed – the result of having shot a female South Korean tourist.

In March 1999, SecDef Perry and his assistant Ashton Carter published via the Brookings Institution an article declaring that North Korea was “moving forward on their nuclear weapons.” Later in the same month James Baker, Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan’s first administration and Secretary of State in the George H. W. Bush administration, noted that the Clinton Administration’s approach to North Korea - a policy of appeasement - continued to fail. Too bad the George W. Bush administration picked up those same policies after 2005.

Towards the end of March 1999, the U.S. announced it would provide more than 200,000 metric tons of food aid and seed potatoes to North Korea, worth about $60 million. “The State Department said there was no link between the food aid and politics, but the announcement came less than a week after North Korea agreed to allow Americans to inspect a site where United States officials fear a secret nuclear weapons program may be under way.” In those days, the U.S. was the largest giver of aid to North Korea.

In May 1999, SecDef Perry acted as an envoy to North Korea, delivering a proposal to end the economic embargo on the country in exchange for an end to it’s long-range missile program. Later in May, Kim Jong-il received a letter today from President Clinton,delivered the letter through Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea’s legislative Supreme People’s Assembly, offering major concessions if for an agreement that the North will end its long-range missile program.

In May or early June, former coach of North Korea’s national soccer team Yoon Myong Chan, 50, who led the national team from 1990 to 1994 defected to the south. Between 1995 and 1999 about 300 North Koreans had defected – in 2007 it was over 2,500 for that year alone. In mid-June, ROK Naval forces sank a North Korean torpedo boat in the waters of the West Coast.

Also in mid-June, a 35-year-old female South Korea tourist at Mt. Kumgang, Min Young Mi, was briefly detained on charges of trying to lure North Koreans to defect. She apparently spoke to the North Korean workers about life in South Korea. The staff o Mt. Kumgang, I have heard, was later replaced with ethnic Koreans from China.

In July North Korea opened a casino hotel in Najin. Years later, most of the guests are still Chinese.

U.S. satellites detected preparations for a missile launch later in the year, and a tentative agreement to halt missile testing was reached in September. A year earlier North Korea had fired a Taepodong I missile over Japan.

In October SecDef Perry’s report, “Review of United States Policy Toward North Korea: Findings and Recommendations” (12 October 1999), was finally released. I had been waiting to read this for months, and was impressed with the no-nonsense look at options and tough language:

If North Korea rejects the first path, it will not be possible for the United States to pursue a new relationship with the DPRK. In that case, the United States and its allies would have to take other steps to assure their security and contain the threat. The U.S. and allied steps should seek to keep the Agreed Framework intact and avoid, if possible, direct conflict. But they would also have to take firm but measured steps to persuade the DPRK that it should return to the first path and avoid destabilizing the security situation in the region.

However, Perry in reality proved to be more of a political hack than pragmatic policy maker. He made the moronic recommendation in 2006 that the U.S. should, “strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched,” a move that would not only violate international law, but could have very easily sparked a war. At the same time, he hypocritically criticized the Bush administrations (then, though waning) hard-line stance on North Korea. The Perry Report sounded good, but Perry’s later comments revealed his true colors; partisan tool.

Also in October, a report prepared for Congress by the General Accounting Office found that the United Nations World Food Program is not able to adequately monitor food aid donated by the U.S. to North Korea. A decade later, diversions of food aid to the military is still an issue.

In 1999, this is some of what was publicly known of North Korea’s nuclear program.

More North Korean news from 1999:

February 1999: George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), tells Congress that North Korea is developing missiles that are capable of hitting the continental United States.

July 1999: North Korea proceeds with plans to test-fire the Taepo Dong-II, which has an estimated range of 3,750 miles, far enough to hit Alaska and Hawaii.

July 1999: Two members of the Japanese parliament claim that semiconductors and argon gas burners used in North Korea’s missile program came from Japan.

July 1999: South Korea reports that North Korea is building an underground missile launch site at Yeongjeo-dong, within a dozen miles of the Chinese border.

September 1999: North Korean TV displays a Taepo Dong-1 missile, allowing analysts to confirm that its first stage has a single engine exhaust and not a cluster of four smaller motors as originally believed. The single exhaust lends support to the allegation that Pyongyang helped Pakistan develop its Ghauri missile and helped Iran develop its Shahab-3 missile, and that both are similar to the Nodong.

September 1999: American and North Korean delegates meet in Berlin, where North Korea agrees to freeze the testing of long-range missiles and in response the U.S. agrees to ease some economic sanctions.

October 1999: North Korea declares its right to launch missiles, just one week after pledging to freeze long-range missile tests.

October 1999: A U.S. National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) report says North Korea is continuing to develop the Taepo Dong-2 missile, which NAIC has classified as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

October 1999: The press reports that North Korea has offered to sell a Scud missile factory to Sudan.

More from ArmsControl.Org:

February 2, 1999: CIA Director George Tenet testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee that, with some technical improvements, North Korea would be able to use the Taepo Dong-1 to deliver small payloads to parts of Alaska and Hawaii. Tenet also says that Pyongyang’s Taepo Dong-2, if it had a third stage like the Taepo Dong-1, would be able to deliver large payloads to the continental United States, albeit with poor accuracy.

March 29-31, 1999: U.S. and North Korean officials hold a fourth round of missile talks in Pyongyang. The United States again expresses concern over North Korea’s missile development and proliferation activities and proposes a deal exchanging North Korean restraint for U.S. sanctions relief. U.S. officials describe the talks as “serious and intensive” but succeed only in reaching agreement to meet again at an unspecified date.

April 25, 1999: The United States, South Korea, and Japan establish the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group to institutionalize close consultation and policy coordination in dealing with North Korea.

May 20-24, 1999: A U.S. inspection team visits the North Korean suspected nuclear site in Kumchang-ni. According to the State Department, the team finds no evidence of nuclear activity or violation of the Agreed Framework.

May 25-28, 1999: Traveling to Pyongyang as a presidential envoy, Perry meets with senior North Korean political, diplomatic, and military officials to discuss a major expansion in bilateral relations if Pyongyang is willing to address U.S. security concerns. Perry delivers a letter from President Clinton to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, but the two do not meet. Perry reportedly calls on North Korea to satisfy U.S. concerns about ongoing nuclear weapons-related activities that are beyond the scope of the Agreed Framework and about ballistic missile development and proliferation in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions, normalization of diplomatic relations, and potentially some form of security guarantee.

September 7-12, 1999: During talks in Berlin, North Korea agrees to a moratorium on testing any long-range missiles for the duration of talks with the United States. The United States agrees to a partial lifting of economic sanctions on North Korea. The two parties agree to continue high-level discussions. (Sanctions are not actually lifted until June 2000.)

September 9, 1999: A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reports that North Korea will “most likely” develop an ICBM capable of delivering a 200-kilogram warhead to the U.S. mainland by 2015.

September 15, 1999: North Korean policy coordinator Perry submits his review of U.S. policy toward North Korea to Congress and releases an unclassified version of the report on October 12. The report recommends “a new, comprehensive and integrated approach to…negotiations with the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] DPRK,” which would involve a coordinated reduction in isolation by the United States and its allies in a “step-by-step and reciprocal fashion.” Potential engagement mechanisms could include the normalization of diplomatic relations and the relaxation of trade sanctions.

November 19, 1999: The United States and North Korea meet in Berlin for talks on bilateral relations and preparations for a North Korean high-level visit to the United States.

December 15, 1999: Five years after the Agreed Framework was signed, KEDO officials sign a turn-key contract with the Korea Electric Power Corporation to begin construction on the two LWRs in Kumho, North Korea. KEDO officials attribute the delay in signing the contract to complex legal and financial challenges and the tense political climate generated by the North Korean Taepo Dong-1 test in August 1998.