LYCOS RETRIEVER 
North Korea
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The Japanese daily reports that "North Korea is believed to have used plutonium from its Yongbyong reactor" in making the bomb that was exploded yesterday. It ... notes that "[a]n agreement with the United States in October 1994 shut down Yongbyong, but North Korea announced in 2003 that it had pulled out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty," then started up the Yongbyong facility once more. It went on to process plutonium for bomb-making purposes. Now, experts say, North Korea has enough plutonium "to make from four to 13 nuclear weapons." Should the Bush administration have taken action back in 2003, or was it too distracted by its big, costly boondoggle in Iraq?
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KAY: If you look at North Korea though, there is an argument that Condoleezza Rice has lost the argument there. She had last year a deal on the table with the North Koreans. Then you see the hawks in the administration starting to talk about this issue of money laundering, which has been going on for decades. The North Koreans got furious about it. Why was there a deliberate — what seems to be a deliberate — effort to undermine a deal on the table? Does this administration want to eliminate the North Korean nuclear program or does it want to change the regime there? That’s a split in the administration.
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North Korea now has the fourth-largest army in the world. It has an estimated 1.21 million armed personnel, compared to about 680,000 in the South. Military spending is estimated at as much as a quarter of GNP, with about 20% of men ages 17-54 in the regular armed forces. North Korean forces have a substantial numerical advantage over the South (between 2 and 3 to 1) in several key categories of offensive weapons--tanks, long-range artillery, and armored personnel carriers. The North has perhaps the world's second-largest special operations force, designed for insertion behind the lines in wartime. While the North has a relatively impressive fleet of submarines, its surface fleet has a very limited capability.
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Despite severe food shortages in North Korea, you are unlikely to have any problems getting food. Your guide will order all your food for you, and you will eat in hard-currency only restaurants. Vegetarians, and people with food allergies/dislikes of common foods such as seafood or eggs will need to make arrangements in advance. A visit to a "real" local restaurant may be possible; enquire with your guide. Note that although your food is better than what 95%+ of the population eats, it's still not necessarily great. Shortages combined with the typical use of Korean cooking styles mean that there is a relatively limited variety of food, which can get wearying on tours of more than a few days.
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North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapons state in 1985. North and South Korean talks begun in 1990 resulted in the 1992 Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula (see, under Foreign Relations, Reunification Efforts Since 1971). However, the international standoff over the North's failure to implement an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the inspection of the North's nuclear facilities led Pyongyang to announce in March 1993 its intention to withdraw from the NPT. A UN Security Council Resolution in May 1993 urged the D.P.R.K. to cooperate with the IAEA and to implement the 1992 North-South Denuclearization Statement. It ... urged all UN Member States to encourage the D.P.R.K.
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North Korea experienced a severe famine following record floods in the summer of 1995 and continues to suffer from chronic food shortages and malnutrition. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) provided substantial emergency food assistance beginning in 1995 (2 million tons of which came from the United States), but the North Korean Government suspended the WFP emergency program at the end of 2005. It has since permitted the WFP to resume operations on a greatly reduced scale through a Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation. External food aid now comes primarily from China and South Korea in the form of grants and long-term concessional loans. South Korea ... donates fertilizer and other materials, while China provides energy. South Korea suspended food and fertilizer shipments to the North in response to North Korea's missile launches in July 2006.
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