At a ceremony marking the event, Kim Hyui Mun, north Korea’s general director for the project, said, "We ought to be compensated for the delay. We are firm on that with no doubt." The north Korean government explains that it needs such plants to meet the country’s power needs.

Jack Pritchard, the U.S. special envoy to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), reiterated Washington’s demand that north Korea open its atomic industry to inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations body originally established under a U.S. Cold War initiative. "The success of the light-water reactor project and the agreed framework ultimately hinges on the choices north Korea makes," he said, adding that Pyongyang must allow "tangible progress" on IAEA inspections.

Charles Kartman, the executive director of the construction consortium, told reporters, "If the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has not done what it is required to do with the IAEA, there is no chance whatsoever that they will get delivery of the critical components for these reactors. What they will end up with instead is a big hole in the ground, a lot of concrete, and some steel fixtures." Kartman, a State Department official who served as a representative of President William Clinton at 1998 talks with Pyongyang, justified the years of delays as being in "the nature of a political project like this."

Led by Washington, the consortium will include representation from Japan, the European Union, and south Korea, whose government is providing the lion’s share of the $4.6 billion cost.

The 1994 agreement followed a period of increased U.S. propaganda and threats against the northern workers state. The U.S. government, which stations 37,000 troops in south Korea and patrols the area with its nuclear-armed Seventh Fleet, accused the DPRK of stockpiling plutonium formed as a by-product of the operation of its reactors and using it to develop nuclear weapons. Secretary of Defense William Perry admitted the following year that military strikes had been prepared against the north at the time.

Under the Agreed Framework, the U.S. government pledged to build the light-water reactors, which do not yield the same amounts of plutonium, and to supply heavy fuel oil to the north until their completion. For its part, Pyongyang closed two graphite reactors, halted the construction of another, and allowed IAEA officials to monitor its disposal of spent nuclear fuel.  
 
‘Axis of evil’
Washington has declared north Korea part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq, because they are countries whose governments are at odds with U.S. imperialism and have the technical and economic capacity to develop long-range missiles and nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads. Washington claims the right to carry out "preemptive" military strikes against such countries to prevent steps toward deployment of any such weapons systems.

At the time of the 1994 agreement, north Korea’s agricultural and industrial production were reeling under the one-two punch of the slump in its foreign trade following the collapse of the Soviet Union and a succession of disastrous floods.

The big-business media has carried a number of reports of policy moves by the north Korean government aimed at increasing availability of agricultural goods. Alongside its appeals for increased foreign aid, Pyongyang has reportedly relaxed price controls on basic foodstuffs, increased wages as much as 20 times, and cut back the system of ration cards which gave working people access to state-subsidized food, the Wall Street Journal and several other U.S. papers reported.

On August 12–14 the governments of north and south Korea will hold cabinet-level talks in Seoul, the southern capital, for the first time in nine months. The meetings will discuss a number of topics, including the reunions of family members separated in the 1950–53 U.S.-led invasion of Korea, a plan to link up a cross-border rail line, and other joint economic projects.

At the end of July, north Korea’s foreign minister Paek Nam Sun held talks with U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell at an Asia-Pacific security forum in Brunei--the first official contact since U.S. president Bush’s "axis of evil" speech on January 29.

Meanwhile, 500 people rallied in front of the headquarters of the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division at Eujongbu, north of Seoul, on June 26, to demand that U.S. troops involved in a training incident that took the lives of two 14-year-old girls be brought before a south Korean court. They also insisted on an apology from U.S. officers.

Under an "agreement" with Washington, the south Korean government has no jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers involved in accidents while on duty.

The two soldiers were in an armored vehicle that struck and killed the teenagers on June 13 during an exercise on south Korean roads. After conducting an investigation jointly with the south Korean police, U.S. officers declared the deaths to be a "tragic accident."  
 
 
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