Terror

Joshua Stanton
The U.S. State Department’s 2001 annual report, the first report following the September 11,
2001 attacks, was more critical, calling North Korea’s response to international efforts to combat
terrorism “disappointing,” despite North Korea’s post-9/11 statement expressing its opposition to
terrorism, its signature of the UN Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism,
and its accession to the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. It criticized North Korea
for failing to provide information on its implementation of UN Security Council resolutions
intended to combat terrorism, including the blocking of terrorist assets. 192
As in previous reports, the U.S. State Department cited North Korea’s continued harboring
of Japanese Red Army hijackers, and also cited “some evidence” that North Korea had sold
“limited quantities” of small arms to terrorists during the previous year. Significantly, it also
raised the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs and its failure to progress toward
implementing the 1994 Agreed Framework. 193
G. WMD Proliferation
North Korea began construction of its 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon in 1979. 194 The reactor
became operational in 1986. By the late 1980s, the U.S. Government became concerned that
North Korea would use the reactor to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. In 1994, the
United States and North Korea signed an Agreed Framework in which the United States agreed
to provide North Korea energy assistance and food aid in exchange for North Korea’s dismantling
of its nuclear programs. The agreement collapsed in 2002 after North Korea admitted to, and
then subsequently denied, having a secret uranium enrichment program.
North Korea has long been suspected of having chemical and biological weapons programs. 195
In 2004, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary, “Access to Evil,” in which a
former guard at Camp 22 alleged that he witnessed the death of a family of four during a test
of chemical weapons in an experimental gas chamber. 196
192 U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2001, 68.
193 Id.
194 “Yongbyon 5MWe Reactor,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, last modified 19 March 2014, http://www.nti.org/
facilities/766/.
195 In 1998, the author of this report, while serving as an officer in U.S. Forces Korea, was required to receive a
series of anthrax inoculation injections.
196 “Access to Evil,” BBC News, 29 January 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/3436701.stm.
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