Thirty years ago, the world was on the brink of a nuclear showdown until Jimmy Carter showed up in North Korea. In June 1994, the former US president arrived in Pyongyang for talks with then-leader Kim Il-sung. This was unprecedented, marking the first time a former or sitting US president had visited North Korea.
But it was also an extraordinary act of personal intervention, one that many believe narrowly averted a war between the US and North Korea that could have cost millions of lives. It also ushered in a broader period of engagement between Pyongyang and the West. None of this might have happened without Carter’s series of diplomatic maneuvers, who died on December 29 at the age of 100.
"Kim Il-sung and Bill Clinton were on a collision course, and Carter stepped in and managed to find a path to resolve the impasse through negotiations," John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University, told the BBC. Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang had been escalating in early 1994 as officials tried to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear program.
US intelligence agencies suspected that, despite ongoing talks, North Korea may have secretly developed nuclear weapons. Then, in a stunning announcement, North Korea said it had begun removing thousands of fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor for reprocessing. This violated an earlier agreement with the US that required inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a nuclear watchdog, to be present. North Korea also announced it was withdrawing from the IAEA.
American suspicions skyrocketed, and Washington believed Pyongyang was preparing weapons, and US officials broke off negotiations. Washington began preparing several retaliatory measures, including launching UN sanctions and reinforcing troops in South Korea. In subsequent interviews, US officials revealed they had also considered dropping bombs or launching missiles at Yongbyon, knowing that this could lead to a war on the Korean Peninsula and the destruction of Seoul, the South Korean capital.
It was in this tense atmosphere that Carter acted. He had been under a secret invitation from Kim Il-sung for years, who had made repeated personal requests for him to visit Pyongyang. In June 1994, after hearing about Washington's military plans and after discussions with his contacts in the US government and China, North Korea's main ally, Carter decided to finally accept Kim's invitation.
"I think we were on the verge of war," he said in an interview with PBS, the US public broadcaster, years later. "If we hadn't avoided the war, there would very likely have been a second Korean War, in which there probably would have been about a million people killed, and they would have continued to produce nuclear fissile material." Carter’s visit was marked by his deft diplomacy and brinkmanship.
First, Carter had to test Kim Il-sung’s sincerity. He made a series of demands, all of which were agreed to, except for one: Carter wanted to travel from Seoul across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the buffer between North and South Korea, to Pyongyang. “They immediately responded that no one had ever done that in the last 43 years, not even the secretary-general of the United Nations, who had to go to Pyongyang through Beijing. I said, ‘Well, then I’m not going,’” he said.
A week later, Kim Il-sung relented. Carter’s next step was harder – convincing his own government to let him go. Robert Gallucci, the chief US negotiator with North Korea at the time, later said there was “discomfort on almost all sides” at the US essentially “subcontracting foreign policy” to a former president.
Carter first sought permission from the State Department, but they ignored him. Undeterred, he decided to inform then-US President Bill Clinton that he was going, regardless. He received support from Vice-President Al Gore, who intercepted a message Carter sent to Clinton. "[Al Gore] called me and told me that if I would change the wording from 'I have decided to go' to 'I am strongly inclined to go', he would try to get permission directly from Clinton... the next morning he called me back and told me I had permission to go."
The trip was on. On June 15, 1994, Carter, accompanied by his wife Rosalynn, a small group of aides and a television crew, crossed the border into North Korea. Meeting Kim Il-sung was a moral quandary for Carter. “I had despised Kim Il-sung for 50 years. I had served on a submarine in the Pacific during the Korean War, and many of my comrades were killed in what I considered to be a war that he had unnecessarily initiated,” he told PBS.
“So I had very serious misgivings about him. However, when I arrived, he treated me with great respect. He was obviously very grateful that I had come.” Over the next few days, the Carters held meetings with Kim Il-sung, visited tourist sites in Pyongyang, and took a cruise on a luxury yacht owned by Kim Il-sung’s son, Kim Jong-il. Carter found that his premonitions were correct: North Korea was not only worried about a US military strike on Yongbyon, but was also prepared to mobilize.
“I specifically asked [Kim’s advisors] if they had a war plan. They answered very clearly, ‘Yes, we are doing that,’” he said. “North Korea could not accept condemnation of their nation and humiliation of their leader, and they would respond.” “I think this weak and self-sacrificing nation, and their deep religious commitment to the leader that you revere, that they call the great leader, meant that they would be willing to make any sacrifice, even the mass death of North Korea, which in my opinion would have been a terrible catastrophe.”
Carter presented a list of demands from Washington, as well as his own proposals. These included resuming talks with the US, starting direct peace negotiations with South Korea, a mutual troop withdrawal, and help from the US to locate the remains of American soldiers buried in North Korea. “He agreed to all of these requests. So I found him to be very reasonable,” Carter said. “As far as I knew then and know now, he was completely honest with me.”
Crucially, Carter proposed a deal in which North Korea would halt its nuclear activities, allow IAEA inspectors back into its reactors, and eventually dismantle the Yongbyon facility. In return, the US and its allies would build light-water reactors in North Korea, which can produce nuclear energy but not weapons material. While Pyongyang enthusiastically accepted the deal, US officials were reluctant when Carter presented it to them over the phone. He then told them he would go on CNN to announce the details of the agreement, which left the Clinton administration no choice but to agree.
Carter later justified his move to force his own government into line, saying he had to “complete the resolution of what I thought was a very serious crisis”. But it did not go down well at home – according to Mr Gallucci, officials were unhappy with Carter’s “freelancing” and attempt to “handcuff” Clinton. Towards the end of the trip, they told him to deliver a statement to the North Koreans reiterating that Clinton had publicly said the US would continue to push for UN sanctions. According to reports at the time, Carter objected to this.
Hours later, he was on board a boat with Kim Il-sung and immediately went off script. On camera, he told Kim that the US had stopped drafting UN sanctions – directly contradicting Clinton. An irate White House quickly distanced itself from Carter. Some expressed frustration publicly, painting a picture of a former president acting on his own. “Carter heard what he wanted to hear… he was creating his own reality,” one senior official complained to the Washington Post at the time.
Many in Washington also criticized the deal itself, saying the North Koreans had taken advantage of him. But Carter's shrewd use of the news media to put pressure on the Clinton administration worked. By broadcasting his negotiations almost immediately, he left the US government little time to react and, after his trip, “you could see the US policy towards North Korea evolving almost hourly,” wrote CNN journalist Mike Chinoy, who covered Carter's trip.
While Carter later claimed he had misspoken on the sanctions issue, he responded to the backlash with typical stubbornness. “When I got back to Seoul, I was surprised and disturbed by the negative reaction from the White House. They urged me not to come to Washington to brief them, urged me to go straight home…” he said. But he defied them. “I decided that what I had to offer was too important to be ignored.”
The final dramatic coda to the episode came a month later. On July 9, 1994, on the same day that US and North Korean officials sat down for talks in Geneva, state media made a stunning announcement: Kim Il-sung had died of a heart attack. Carter’s deal was immediately thrown into uncertainty. But negotiators persevered, and a formal plan known as the Agreed Framework was finalized weeks later.
While the agreement fell apart in 2003, it is notable for freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear program for almost a decade. “Carter had the guts,” said Robert Carlin, a former CIA and US State Department official who led delegations to negotiate with North Korea, noting that Carter’s real achievement was getting the US government to cooperate. “Carter more or less kicked open a door in North Korea. Washington was the bigger challenge… if anything, Carter’s intervention helped stop the freight train of US decision-making from going over a cliff,” he told the BBC.
Carter’s visit was also important for opening a path to reconciliation, which led to several later visits, including in 2009 when he traveled to North Korea with Clinton to bring back captured US journalists. He is also credited with paving the way for Donald Trump’s 2018 summit with Kim Jong-un, Kim Il-sung’s grandson, as Dr Delury put it, “Carter made it possible for a sitting US president to meet a North Korean leader”.
That summit failed, of course, and in the long run, Carter’s trip did not succeed in eliminating the shadow of nuclear war, which has only grown larger – today, North Korea possesses missiles that are believed to be capable of hitting the US mainland. But Carter has been lauded for his political gamble. This is in stark contrast to his time in office, when he was criticized for being too passive in his foreign policy, especially in dealing with the Iran hostage crisis.
His visit to North Korea "is a remarkable example of constructive diplomatic intervention by a former leader," said Dr Delury. His legacy is not without controversy, as he was criticized for acting unilaterally. His critics argue that he played a risky and complex game, as CNN's Mike Chinoy put it, "trying to circumvent what he saw as misguided and dangerous US policy by cobbling together the elements of a nuclear deal on his own."
But others argue that Carter was the right man for the job at the time. Han S. Park, one of several people who helped Carter facilitate the 1994 visit, said he was “very strong-willed” and “a man of peace, inside and out”. While his stubbornness also meant he “didn’t get along with a lot of people,” this combination of qualities ultimately meant he was “the best person to prevent another Korean War,” Professor Park said.
Above all, Carter was convinced he had done the right thing. “He didn’t let the complaints and anxieties of the US government stop him,” said Robert Carlin. “Carter had the guts.”