Chris Buckley, ‘China Says Opposed North Korea Nuclear Test’, Reuters News Service, 25 May 2009, http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-39856320090525.

According to a US official, North Korean negotiator Li Gun told US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly in May 2003 that his country would ‘export nuclear weapons, add to its current arsenal or test a nuclear device’. ‘N Korea “Planning to Export Nuclear Bombs”’, Telegraph, 7 May 2003, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1429369/N-Korea-planningto-export-nuclear-bombs.html. In September 2006, US North Korea analyst Selig Harrison reported that North Korean negotiator Kim Gye Gwan told him ‘the United States should be concerned about the possibility of fissile material being transferred to third parties or nuclear weapons being transferred to third parties’. Jon Fox, ‘North Korea Hints at Nuclear Weapon Transfer’, Global Security Newswire, 29 September 2006, http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006_9_29.html#730DE9AE.

Mel Gurtov, ‘Why North Korea is so Crazy’, Time, 11 May 2009, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1894793,00.html; ‘Has North Korea Gone Crazy?’, Economist, 27 May 2009, http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/05/has_north_korea_gone_crazy. Fortunately, some media (including Gurtov's article cited above, despite the headline) are promulgating the idea that there is a logic underlying the North Korean behaviour that seems crazy to so many Americans. Examples are Jason Zengerle, ‘Kim Jong Il: Crazy Like a Fox’, New Republic, 4 August 2009, http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank/kim-jong-il-crazy-fox; and ‘Why It's Sane for Kim Jong-il to be Crazy’, Reuters News Service, 27 October 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE59Q0BE20091027.

Examples of officials using these terms include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Senators Judd Gregg, Richard Lugar and Sam Brownback; and Congressmen Doug Lamborn, Joe Wilson, Michael Turner, Trent Franks and Brad Sherman. ‘Clinton says U.S. Ready for Talks with North Korea’, Reuters News Service, 22 April 2009, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53L4IT20090422; ‘Lamborn Statement on North Korea Missile Launch’, 6 April 2009, http://lamborn.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=54&parentid=22&sectiontree=21,22,54&itemid=164; ‘Brownback, Kyl, Gregg introduce Legislation to Strengthen U.S. Policy on North Korea’, 9 July 2009, http://senatorsambrownback.blogspot.com/2009/07/brownback-kyl-greggintroduce_09.html; opening statement by Senator Richard G. Lugar, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on North Korea, 11 June 2009, http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2009/LugarStatement090611p.pdf; Joe Wilson, statement during interview with Fox News, http://www.joewilson.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413; ‘Brownback Condemns North Korea Nuclear Test’, 9 October 2006, http://brownback.senate.gov/public/press/record.cfm?id=264513; ‘Republican Efforts to Restore Funding for Missile Defense Blocked’, American Chronicle, 22 June 2009, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/107191; ‘Congressman Sherman Condemns North Korea Nuclear Test’, California Chronicle, 9 October 2006, http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/view/14580; ‘Kyl: “I'm Not Convinced New U.N. Resolutions would be Treated any Differently by North Korea than the Ones it has Already Ignored”’, 4 June 2009, http://kyl.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=314011.

‘Kyl Reviews President's First Six Months’, 20 July 2009, http://kyl.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=315987.

John McCain, interview on Fox News, 27 May 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522557,00.html.

Patricia Ruiz-Healy, ‘Congressman: U.S. Like Charlie Brown’, DC Writeup, 22 June 2009, http://www.thedcwriteup.com/2009/06/congressman-u-s-falls-on-rear-endlike-charlie-brown/.

‘Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) On Fox News, 7/4/06’, http://thinkprogress.org/rohrbacher-filner-transcript/; ‘Smart Power: Remaking U.S. Foreign Policy In North Korea’, Hearing before the House Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 12 February 2009, Congressional Record, Serial No. 111–5 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 2009), p. 100.

Stephen Peter Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 7.

John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Reckless States and Realism’, International Relations, vol. 23, no. 2, June 2009, p. 244.

Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, ‘Introduction: Defining Reform as Openness’, in Gerald Segal (ed.), Openness and Foreign Policy Reform in Communist States (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 13; Jungsup Kim, International Politics and Security in Korea (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), p. 30; Robyn Lim, ‘Japan as the “New South Korea”?’, Institute for Corean-American Studies, 5 March 2003, http://www.icasinc.org/2003/2003l/2003lrxl.html; Paul French, North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula – A Modern History (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007), p. 76; Charles K. Armstrong, The Koreas (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2007), p. 135.

An example is North Korea hardliner and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who fumed in May 2009, ‘the curtain is about to rise again on the long-running nuclear tragicomedy, “North Korea Outwits the United States”’. John R. Bolton, ‘Get Ready for Another North Korean Nuke Test’, Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124277648950937029.html.

It is also possible that Pyongyang intended from the beginning that a brief period of hostile acts would precede re-engagement so that North Korea did not appear to be negotiating from a position of weakness, or to frighten the Americans, South Koreans and Japanese to make greater efforts to avoid displeasing Pyongyang in the upcoming talks.

Denny Roy, ‘North Korea and the “Madman” Theory’, Security Dialogue, vol. 25, no. 3, September 1994, pp. 307–16.

Jonathan Watts, ‘North Korea: US Pressure would mean War’, Guardian, 11 October 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/11/northkorea4.

‘We'll Attack if Provoked, North Korea Warns US’, Associated Press, 29 June 2009, ‘http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/50156;’ N Korea “Threatens to Retaliate” Against UN Sanctions’, AFP, 26 July 2009, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j23bA-872nDcmUNkS5mOpfMDKsMA.

Choe Sang-Hun, ‘North Korea Threatens Military Strikes on South’, New York Times, 27 May 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28korea.html.

Queenie Wong, ‘Gates: U.S. in Good Position if North Korea Launches Missile Toward Hawaii’, US News & World Report, 19 June 2009, http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2009/06/19/gates-us-in-good-position-if-northkorea-launches-missile-toward-hawaii.html.

‘North Korea Tests its Second Nuclear Device’, Economist, 25 May 2009, http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13723594&source=most_commented; Jonathan D. Pollack, ‘Kim Jong-il's Clenched Fist’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, October 2009, p. 159.

Jack Pritchard, ‘North Korea: Benign Neglect Or Active Engagement?’, National Journal Online, 11 May 2009, http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/05/north-korea-benignneglect-or.php; Shim Jae Hoon, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Tantrum’, YaleGlobal Online, 28 May 2009, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/north-korea-nucleartantrum.

B.R. Myers, ‘North Korea Will Never Disarm’, New York Times, 28 May 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29iht-edmyers.html; B.R. Myers, ‘How Pyongyang Plays the West’, Wall Street Journal, 21 February 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120352922998580335.html.

Sico van der Meer, ‘How Rogue States Play the Game: The Case of North Korea's Nuclear Programme’, in Jaap de Zwaan, Edwin Bakker and Sico van der Meer (eds), Challenges in a Changing World: Clingendael Views on Global and Regional Issues (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2008), p. 228; Myers, ‘North Korea Will Never Disarm’.

Bruce Cumings and Meredith Jung-En Woo, ‘What Does North Korea Want?’, New York Times, 7 July 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/opinion/07cumings.html?_r=1.

For a representative statement see Victor Cha, who arguse in his section of a dual-authored essay that the Agreed Framework was a ‘commitment that the North was willing to trade in its rogue proliferation threat for a path of reform and peaceful integration into the world community’, but that through later actions ‘the North has shown it all to be a lie’. Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang, ‘The Debate Over North Korea’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 119, no. 2, 2004, p. 246.

Ibid., pp. 238, 237.

Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 373, 374.

‘North Korea Warns of “Sea of Fire” as US Envoy Arrives’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/13/1041990188030.html; Daniel A. Pinkston and Phillip C. Saunders, ‘Seeing North Korea Clearly’, Survival, vol. 45, no. 3, Autumn 2003, p. 82; Bruce Cumings, interview on ‘Democracy Now!’, 11 October 2006, http://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/11/north_korea_warns_of_new_tests.

Selig Harrison, testimony to Congress, ‘Smart Power: Remaking U.S. Foreign Policy In North Korea’, pp. 10–12.

‘Lee Myung Bak's Violation of Democracy and Human Rights under Fire’, Korean Central News Agency, 4 March 2009, http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm.

Morton I. Abramowitz, James T. Laney and Eric Heginbotham, Meeting the North Korean Nuclear Challenge (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2003), p. 16.

Yoo Choonsik, ‘Korean Unification comes with 60-Year Bill: Report’, Reuters News Service, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE57Q0IV20090827.

Cha and Kang, ‘The Debate Over North Korea’, p. 238; Bruce Cumings, ‘Endgame in Korea’, 25 November 2002, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021209/cumings20021125; Andrew O'Neil, ‘Learning to Live with Uncertainty: The Strategic Implications of North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Capability’, Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 26, no. 2, August 2005, p. 318; Selig Harrison, testimony to Congress, ‘Smart Power: Remaking U.S. Foreign Policy In North Korea’, p. 20; Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Nation Books, 2004), p. 5.

Hamish McDonald, ‘Cheney's Tough Talking Derails Negotiations with North Korea’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 December 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/21/1071941611806.html.

Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 273.

Mike Allen and Barton Gellman, ‘Preemptive Strikes Part Of US Strategic Doctrine’, Washington Post, 11 December 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1211-02.htm.

Bruce B. Auster and Kevin Whitelaw, “Upping the Ante for Kim Jong Il: Pentagon Plan 5030, a New Blueprint for Facing down North Korea’, U.S. News & World Report, 13 July 2003, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030721/21korea.htm.

During a tense period in relations with North Korea in 1976, US forces in the Pacific moved to a relatively high state of combat readiness and nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers flew north over the Yellow Sea in the direction of North Korea to create the appearance of an approaching air raid. John K. Singlaub, Hazardous Duty: An American Soldier in the Twentieth Century (New York: Summit Books, 1991), cited in Richard A. Mobley, ‘Revisiting the Korean Tree-Trimming Incident’, Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 35, Summer 2003, pp. 111, 113–14. The Clinton administration gave a secret but explicit warning of possible US use of force including nuclear weapons against an intransigent North Korea in 1995. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ‘U.S. Nuclear Threats: Then and Now’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 62, no. 5, September–October 2006, p. 70. According to declassified and subsequently publicised US defence documents, in 1998 US aircraft practiced simulated nuclear air strikes against North Korea at a bombing range in Florida. ‘4th Fighter Wing Nuclear Planning, 1998’, U.S.–Korea Nuclear Relations, Nautilus Institute, Nuclear Strategy Project, http://www.nautilus.org/archives/nukestrat/USA/NSNF/4fw.html.

Pinkston and Saunders, ‘Seeing North Korea Clearly’, p. 91. Many analysts have described the Bush team, particularly during Bush's first term, as divided on North Korea between moderates such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and hardliners such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and John R. Bolton, who served Bush as undersecretary of state and as US representative to the United Nations. In the words of one senior US official, ‘the Bolton crowd got to the president’; Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St Martin's Press, 2008), p. 206. Rumsfeld was linked to a memo leaked to the New York Times that called for the US and Chinese governments to cooperate in forcing regime change in North Korea; David E. Sanger, ‘Administration Divided over North Korea’, New York Times, 21 April 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/international/asia/21KORE.html. Cheney's deputy national security adviser reported that Cheney's view was ‘the only lasting solution to the problem [of NK proliferation] … is a change in the character of the regime’; Chinoy, p. 194. During an interview with a New York Times writer, Bolton pointed to a book titled The End of North Korea and said, ‘That is our policy’; Christopher Marquis, ‘Absent From the Korea Talks: Bush's Hard-Liner’, New York Times, 2 September 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/international/asia/02BOLT.html?pagewanted=1. Richard Perle, a senior adviser to Rumsfeld, said publicly that a US military strike against the Yongbyon facility should not be ruled out; Jim Wolf, ‘U.S. Can't Rule Out N. Korea Strike, Perle Says’, Reuters News Service, 11 June 2003, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0611-09.htm.

‘N Korea Blasts US over “Bunkerbuster” Bombs’, Bangkok Post, 27 October 2009, http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/158249/nkorea-blasts-usover-bunker-buster-bombs.

Choe Sang-Hun, ‘Kim Dae-jung, Ex-President of S. Korea, Dies at 83’, New York Times, 18 August 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/world/asia/19kim.html?pagewanted=all.

Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), ch. 3.

B.R. Myers, ‘After Kim Jong Il’, Atlantic, 23 September 2008, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809u/kim-jong-il.

‘Path of Peace Available to North Korea, Obama Aays’, CNN, 16 June 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/16/south.korea.meeting/index.html.

‘Smart Power: Remaking U.S. Foreign Policy In North Korea’, p. 30.

Cha and Kang, ‘The Debate Over North Korea’, p. 245; B.R. Myers, ‘The Obsessions of Kim Jong-il’, New York Times, 6 November 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/opinion/the-obsessions-of-kim-jong-il.html; Cumings, interview, ‘Democracy Now!’.

Victor D. Cha, ‘What Do They Really Want?: Obama's North Korea Conundrum’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, October 2009, p. 126.

Gilllian Goh Hui Lynn, ‘Seeing Beyond the Security Imperative: Rethinking North Korea's Motivations for a Nuclear Program’, faculty working paper, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 2006, http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/Working_papers_2006.aspx, pp.17–27.

‘Clinton Likens North Korea to Unruly Children’, Reuters News Service, 20 July 2009, http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/07/20/09/clinton-likens-north-korea-unrulychildren; ‘U.S. Secretary of State's Anti-DPRK Rhetoric Blasted’, Korean Central News Agency, 23 July 2009, http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm.

On the grand bargain, see Victor Cha, ‘Challenges Ahead in Dealing with North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions’, Washington Report, East–West Center/ U.S. Asia Pacific Council, vol. 3, November 2009, p. 4.