Small note amid ongoing debates: in 1986, North Korea hosted the Pyongyang International Conference for Denuclearization and Peace on the Korean Peninsula—the same year the 5 MW(e) reactor at Yongbyon achieved criticality and six years before the 1992 DPRK-ROK joint declaration.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War affected North Korean calculations, but some might be interested in Kim Il Sung’s remarks from ’86 regarding that conference: aindft.com/English/juche/…
No one’s disputing that Kim Il Sung and North Korea weren’t instrumental in offering up the lexical guidance that manifested in the joint ROK-DPRK endorsement of “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in 1992 (or at least, no one should be).
But the details remain: when Kim Il Sung was drawn to the concept, South Korea’s covert nuclear weapons program was just a little more than a decade out from its termination under Park Chung-hee. And US tactical nuclear weapons remained on the Peninsula.
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