North Korea's announced propagation of its nuclear program has caught the attention of a Tufts graduate and dean who are among the foremost experts on the region.
Bill Richardson, who attended Tufts as an undergraduate and the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy graduate, is currently Governor of New Mexico.
"There is no doubt that the North Koreans pose a serious threat," said Richardson, who recently met with North Korean diplomats in order to discuss the crisis on the Korean peninsula. "They have actively pursued the development of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them."
Stephen Bosworth, the Dean of the Fletcher School and the Ambassador to South Korea under the Clinton Administration and the former head of the Korean Energy Development Organization, agrees that the North Korean nuclear threat should not be taken lightly.
"Potentially it's dangerous -- it is credible, we have to pay attention to it," Bosworth said.
The current crisis in Korea centers around a 1994 document known as the Agreed Framework, which set the terms of negotiation between the US and North Korea. The document stated that if the US would help North Korea build a light-water reactor if North Korea stopped building nuclear weapons. Additionally, until the completion of the light-water reactor, the US would agree to donate heavy-fuel oil to North Korea.
North Korea claims that the US violated the terms of the Agreed Framework, and remains steadfast in continuing experiments with nuclear energy. Richardson and most Americans disagree. "The United States did not violate the Agreed Framework," Richardson said.
Richardson sees North Korea's actions as being motivated by several factors including the feeling that it has been "ignored and insulted by the Bush Administration, [...] uncertainty about security," and a concern "about food and energy aid to North Korea," according to Richardson.
Bosworth does not see Korea's nuclear threat as a useful mechanism to negotiate with the US. "They want security assurances and they want economic help, [but] they're not going to get either one until they put their nuclear program out on the table and say they're going to give it up," Bosworth said.
Last month, Governor Richardson was asked to help facilitate dialogue between the two countries. "The North Koreans approached me in December to ask for the meetings," he said. Richardson who has traveled to North Korea three times, and twice brought back Americans who had been detained there.
Bosworth sees negotiation as the best means to solve these disputes. "We really can't use a military response because the risk of catastrophic conflict and the damage to South Korea would be too great," Bosworth said. "I think it would've been much more prudent to continue a dialogue with the Koreans.
"They see us as part of the solution to their problems. They are determined that they're going to have a dialogue with us, their real objective is normalization."
According to Bosworth, the problem of negotiation is that "the US has been reluctant" to prepare to talk with the North Koreans.
"I have been a proponent of dialogue with the North Koreans," Richardson said. "Not to make concessions, but to engage in serious discussions aimed at easing tensions."
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