LYCOS RETRIEVER 
North Korea: North Korean
built 643 days ago
In 1994, heavy rains hit North Korea, and nearly 5.4 million people were displaced, 330,000 hectares of agricultural land was destroyed, and 1.9 million tons of grain was swept away. North Korea’s poor infrastructure was unable to cope with the flooding. As a result, famine ensued, and from 1995 to present, an estimated 2–3 million North Koreans have perished from starvation. Subsequent famines and floods have struck North Korea since 1994, further weakening their struggling economy, and today a quarter of its 24.6 million people remain critically dependent on foreign food aid for survival. In 2003, Amnesty International reported 13 million suffered from malnutrition — over 50% of North Koreaa’s population. In 2005, the World Food Programme reported that 37% of all North Korean children were chronically malnourished.
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Venturing into North Korea is a daunting experience, and western tourists (must) join an organized tour, one approved by the North Korean authorities. Most of those tours originate in China and require lots of paperwork.
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North Korea has never had any intentions of giving up it’s nuclear program, the failure of the 1994 Agreed Framework only confirms this. The North Koreans were happy to appear to give up their ambitions of wanting nuclear weapons in return for international aid while covertly working on them any way and playing nice to the international community. Things changed with the Bush Administration. President Bush’s policy is that the North Koreans will not receive US aid unless it thoroughly without a doubt ends their nuclear weapon program. Bush wasn’t about to cut a deal just to keep the North Koreans quiet and out of the headlines and pass the problem to a future presidential administration that would allow the North Koreans to continue to receive aid while at the same time covertly working on their nuclear weapons program. If Bush had cut a deal with the North Koreans and let’s say a Democratic president takes power in 2008 and the North Korean nuclear issue came up again what do you think that Democratic Administration would be saying about the deal Bush cut with the North Koreans?
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The US and North Korean governments both have acknowledged the “New York channel,” a “back door conduit” for bilateral meetings. This AlterNet article ... suggests that conservative media owner Reverend Moon may play a large role in the two countries’ relations by meeting officials and investing millions of dollars on both sides. But the true motives of Moon, whose “anti-communist” and “anti-American” sentiments reflect his prophecy that the US will “bow down” to the Unification Church, remain a key question in the ties between Washington and Pyongyang.
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North Korea has developed several missiles that can reach a target of up to 1,550 miles. The Nodong-1 missile is a short range missile capable of roughly 720 miles while the BM-25 is capable of 1,550 miles. It is not certain whether these missiles are in fact able to carry WMD payloads. Development has begun on a longer ranged ballistic missile Taepodong-2 which could theoretically hit a target as far as three thousand miles, almost three times the range of its predecessor, the Taepodong-1. Current North Korean missiles pose a threat to countries in East Asia, but with a completed Taepodong-2, this threat would broaden even to parts of the United States. CFR.org’s Crisis Guide on the Korean Peninsula details the North Korean military arsenal.
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Shortly after signing the agreement, North Korea began seeking nuclear weapons fuel through uranium enrichment. In the late 1990s, the United States began to receive scattered intelligence reports revealing a North Korean uranium enrichment program. Some evidence points to the existence of this program as early as 1987. 18 This program apparently received new life in 1997 when Pakistan, strapped for cash by U.S. sanctions, began paying for its North Korean missile imports with uranium enrichment technology.
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