Implementing a Korea–Japan Nuclear‐Weapon‐Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope, Domain, Verification, Compliance and Regional Benefits
To assess the possibility of a future denuclearized Korean peninsula it is important to consider not only US and allied security interests, but also North Korean underlying security concerns. However, beyond the North–South conflict on the Korean peninsula, there is also a longer-term problem of Korean–Japanese relations. Both Japan and South Korea have the capacity to rapidly develop and acquire nuclear weapons. North Korean nuclear acquisition could well provide the rationale for either or both to acquire nuclear weapons. In the Northeast Asian region there is already a lengthy history of denuclearization proposals and even agreements. While the focus of previous proposals had concentrated on the Korean peninsula itself, an alternative way forward would be the initial establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) between Japan and South Korea, with North Korea encouraged to join at a later date. The negotiation of a Korea–Japan NWFZ would serve to confirm and guarantee the current non-nuclear-weapon status of South Korea and Japan, while acting as an important confidence-building step to address North Korea's underlying security concerns and enable it to subsequently join the NWFZ. Internationally, the commitment of the US Obama administration to a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons, the recent unanimous final document of the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference calling for expansion of NWFZs, and the greater openness of the USA and other nuclear powers to NWFZ establishment in areas of regional conflict, suggest that we now have a new window of opportunity for denuclearization of Northeast Asia.
The path not taken, the way still open
Michael Hamel-Green of Victoria University and Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute argue that a Korean Nuclear Weapon Free Zone may be a necessary condition to achieving the full denuclearization of Korea. As well as providing “benefits to the United States in preventing a major direct and wider proliferation threat from North Korea, and to China, Japan and South Korea in maintaining stability in the Northeast Asian Region, it would also serve to address North Korean security concerns about potential US nuclear strikes”. They point out that “the two Koreas have already negotiated a legal basis for a Korean Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the form of the 1992 Joint Declaration on the enuclearization of the Korea Peninsula.” This could form the basis of a NWFZ covering the peninsula. Alternately, they suggest, the ROK and Japan could create a Japan Korea NWFZ via a bilateral treaty.
Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis
When George W. Bush took office in 2001, North Korea's nuclear program was frozen and Kim Jong Il had signaled he was ready to negotiate. Today, North Korea possesses as many as ten nuclear warheads, and possibly the means to provide nuclear material to rogue states or terrorist groups. How did this happen? Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing, including Colin Powell, John Bolton, and ex-Korean president Kim Dae-jung, as well as insights gained during fourteen trips to Pyongyang, Mike Chinoy takes readers behind the scenes of secret diplomatic meetings, disputed intelligence reports, and Washington turf battles as well as inside the mysterious world of North Korea. "Meltdown" provides a wealth of new material about a previously opaque series of events that eventually led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation and pursue negotiations, and explains how the diplomatic process collapsed and produced the crisis the Obama administration confronts today.