The United States and the Two Koreas, 1969-2000
The National Security Archive's collection on U.S.-Korean relations covers both diplomatic, security, and economic relations between the United States and its ally, South Korea; and the challenges to the U.S. posed by an adversarial North Korea. It spans events dating from the Nixon administration's response to the April 15, 1969 downing, by North Korean MiG-17s, of a U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan, to efforts during the Clinton years to deter Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. The collection contains approximately 1,800 records documents released by the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies, as well as historical material compiled through research at the National Archives and the presidential libraries. The many newly-declassified documents in the set deal with a wide range of significant themes and events. These include detailed contingency plans for military strikes against North Korea in response to the EC-121 incident; growing concern over North Korea's economic instability; the leadership transition from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang; political liberalization in South Korea (from the Kwangju uprising to the election of Kim Dae Jung); a historic summit meeting between the leaders of South and North Korea in 2000, and secret discussions with other powers, including Japan, China and Russia, aimed at coordinating an international diplomatic response to North Korea's threat to regional security.