Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis - Hardcover

Chinoy, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312371535 ISBN 13: 9780312371531

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2008

Synopsis

Meltdown is the riveting inside account of an American diplomatic disaster

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, North Korea’s nuclear program was frozen. Kim Jong-Il had signaled to the outgoing Clinton administration he was ready to negotiate an end to his missile program. Today, North Korea has become a full-fledged nuclear power, with enough fissile material to stage an underground test in 2006, manufacture as many as ten more warheads, and—in the worst-case scenario—provide nuclear material to rogue states or terrorist groups. How did the United States fail to prevent a long-standing adversary like North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons?

Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing, including Colin Powell, John Bolton, and ex-Korean president Kim Dae-jung, as well as insights gained during fourteen trips to Pyongyang, longtime CNN correspondent and North Korea expert Mike Chinoy provides a blow-by-blow account that takes readers behind the scenes of secret diplomatic meetings, disputed intelligence reports, and Washington turf battles as well as inside the mysterious world of North Korea. Meltdown shows how the U.S. refusal to engage in serious diplomacy spurred Kim Jong Il to stage his nuclear breakout, and provides a wealth of new material about the subsequent reversal of course that led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation in the hope of negotiating an end to the nuclear crisis.

Chinoy has produced a gripping account of one of America's longest-running, most volatile foreign policy crises that explains why North Korea remains a danger today—and why it didn't have to be this way.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Chinoy is the Edgerton Fellow on Korean Security at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. Until 2006, he was a foreign correspondent for CNN, largely in Asia, and made numerous visits to North Korea over the course of nearly two decades. He is the recipient of many broadcast journalism awards, including Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont Awards.

From the Back Cover

Advance Praise for Meltdown

"It's easy to demonize the North Koreans, not quite as easy to dismiss them; although the Bush administration has tried to do both. Mike Chinoy brilliantly and painstakingly reconstructs the faltering and dangerous dynamic by which Washington and Pyonyang misread one another's intentions. It's a path that could well lead to nuclear catastrophe and a story that's been told here with unblinking clarity."—Ted Koppel

“Mike Chinoy’s superbly written book tells the tragic story of how Washington’s unwillingness to engage in serious diplomacy with Pyongyang contributed to a new nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, alienating our South Korean allies in the process.  He goes on to document the dramatic reversal of course that has seen the Bush administration drop its failed policy aimed at isolating and confronting North Korea, adopting instead a creative approach that, if North Korea acts wisely and rationally, could finally end the nuclear crisis, bring North Korea into the community of nations, and improve the lives of the North Korean people.  This book, and the blunt, no-holds-barred comments it contains from many of the key protagonists of this period, is not to be missed.”—Evans Revere, president, The Korea Society

“The explosion of a nuclear warhead by North Korea in October 2006 was the single greatest failure in a decades-long effort to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mike Chinoy's Meltdown tells the tale of the tortured path that led to that failure, and the ongoing attempt to contain the fallout, with an authority and a wealth of insider detail that is unmatched. Meltdown is a diplomatic history that reads like a spy novel. It takes us inside the Washington wars that crippled the Bush administration's North Korea policy, and offers fresh insights into the view from Pyongyang, as well as from Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Meltdown will be the gold standard for reporting on the North Korean nuclear crisis for years to come."—Daniel Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein Asia–Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

Reviews

The Bush administration's bellicose but feckless attempts to quash North Korea's nuclear weapons program were the nadir of its famously maladroit diplomacy, to judge by this revealing blow-by-blow. Ex-CNN Pyongyang correspondent Chinoy details the rancorous infighting during which hardliners like John Bolton and Dick Cheney talked down State Department doves to impose an intransigent North Korea policy, replacing negotiations with Axis-of-Evil rhetoric and unilateral demands. Their approach backfired disastrously, he argues, as Pyongyang restarted and escalated its dormant nuclear initiative and finally tested an atom bomb while the U.S. fulminated helplessly—a needless outcome, he suggests, given the North Koreans' oft-expressed readiness to abandon their nuclear program in exchange for aid and normalized relations. Chinoy presents a lucid exposition of the issues along with a colorful account of diplomatic wrangling in which U.S. officials rivaled their North Korean counterparts in dogmatism and prickly sensitivity to niceties. (One joint statement was almost derailed when the Americans insisted on changing the phrase peaceful coexistence to exist peacefully together.) His is a fine, insightful diplomatic history of a dire confrontation—and a hard-hitting critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Photos. (Aug. 7)
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North Korea exploded an atomic bomb in October 2006, representing the failure of American diplomacy to thwart the country’s nuclear ambition. Chronicled here by former CNN reporter Chinoy, that diplomacy came in two flavors: negotiations favored by the Clinton administration, and a more confrontational approach preferred by the successor Bush administration. That neither succeeded probably says more about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a despotic Stalinist relic, than it does about the merits of carrots versus sticks, but that debate dominates Chinoy’s narrative. Clearly critical of sticks, Chinoy plainly gained greater access to advocates of negotiation than to its skeptics, and none to relevant North Korean officials. But the latter appear at one remove in the impressions of Americans who bargained with them, rendering a picture of North Korea’s truculent belligerence on the nuclear issue. Depicting, too, the politics within the D.C. foreign policy bureaucracy, Chinoy extensively quotes major players’ viewpoints, pegging their strategies and tactics to milestones on the path to the present impasse. A lively journalistic review of the past decade in U.S.–North Korean relations. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312371535
• ISBN 13: 9780312371531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 432