Analyzing the Relationship between United States and North Korea - Research Paper Example

In 1994, after the death of Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il assumed the power and continued on with his father’s policies. Their anti-West approach and hatred for the South Korea has led to a very fragile relation with the United States. (Porter) After the supposed end of the Cold War, in 1995 North Korea managed to reach an agreement with United States to build nuclear reactors on their territory. Nevertheless, soon enough North Korea, as being unpredictable and ruthless, showed signs of the same by sending missiles flying right over its neighbor Japan.

This was taken as a direct threat to the sovereignty of Japan and posed an immediate threat of any future attack on their soil. A clear indication had been given by North Korea that they were working on the development of their nuclear arms. A turning point occurred in 2002, when President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address labeled North Korea as “Axis of Evil” along with Iran and Iraq. In the same year US stopped oil shipments to DPKR in protest to their secretive nuclear armament program.

Following this, North Korea kicked out international nuclear inspectors from its nuclear plants as a retaliation move. The already shallow relations between the two nations started to soar and worsen. North Korea claimed that they were developing their nuclear program in response to the risk of imminent attack from the US, while at the same time heavily fortified and militarized their border with South Korea. United States does not have any diplomatic relations with North Korea as their imposed trade sanctions on North Korea still exist to this day.

Sweden acts on behalf of the US interests in North Korea and helps in facilitating relations between the two countries. (Affairs) In the following year, 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and terminated the freeze on its existing plutonium-based nuclear facilities. They further went on to expel IAEA