NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR TEST

NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR TEST

North Korea’s economic woes let up a bit due to improved relations with South Korea, which adopted a “sunshine policy” of unconditional aid towards its northern neighbor in the early 2000s. Around the same time, North Korea came closer than ever before to forging peace with the United States, even hosting U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Pyongyang in 2000. But relations between the two Koreas, and between North Korea and the West, soon deteriorated, due to North Korea’s aggressive efforts to become a nuclear power. Though Kim Jong Il had pledged to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed in 1995, in the early 2000s reports began to surface of underground nuclear facilities and ongoing research into the production of highly enriched uranium. By 2003, North Korea had withdrawn from the NPT, expelled international weapons inspectors and resumed nuclear research at a facility in Yongbyon. Three years later, Kim’s government announced it had carried out its first underground nuclear test.