This paper was originally prepared for the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy sponsored by the Center for International Policy and Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, Brookings Institution, Washington, January 9, 2003. The 28-member panel included Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., former Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs of Staff; two former U.S. ambassadors to South Korea, Donald P. Gregg and James T. Laney; Lee H. Hamilton, Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States; Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, who negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea; and Selig S. Harrison, Chairman of the Task Force, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a leading Korea expert; and the directors of research institutes specializing in Korea and East Asia at ten leading Universities. The Task Force convened on three occasions between November 2002 and January 2003. It was co-sponsored by the Center for International Policy and the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago. Funding was provided by the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation and the Center for East Asian Studies. For more information on the task force: http://www.ciponline.org/asia/

Mindy Kotler, director and founder of the Japan Information Access Project in Washington, DC, asserts that the Bush administration must examine its three fundamental assumptions of North Korea: 1) Kim Jong Il is a gangster and not a legitimate head of state; 2) North Korea is a client state of the People’s Republic of China; and 3) North Korea’s neighbors are not concerned with another Asian nuclear power. By failing to analyze these assumptions, the Bush administration has hindered a creative response to North Korea’s nuclear program.