Epilogue: Nobel Oblige

Abstract

Two years and four months after the North-South summit, North Korea was exposed in October 2002 during the mission of James Kelly to Pyongyang to be developing enriched uranium in violation of the 1994 Geneva framework. When Kim Dae Jung stepped down in February 2003, the five-megawatt reactor and reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon were again producing plutonium for warheads. Funding from the South was essential for renewal of the program. The price paid for the Nobel and the summit helped to finance North Korea’s first explosion of a small nuclear device on October 9, 2006, and the second, larger underground test on May 25, 2009.