SEOUL -- Is it deja vu all over again on the Korean Peninsula? The short answer is yes . . . and no.
North Korea seems to be following its time-honored pattern, witnessed most prominently during the 1993-94 nuclear crisis that lead to the now "nullified" Agreed Framework. Then, like today, the North was suspected of cheating on nuclear-related international agreements: the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, and the associated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement. Pyongyang's response was to announce a planned withdrawal from the NPT, thus creating a diplomatic crisis that came close to a military confrontation.
(Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry has acknowledged that the U.S. was very close to resorting to military force -- a surgical strike against the Yongbyon nuclear facility -- before former U.S. President Jimmy Carter inserted himself into the process and led the two sides away from a confrontation and toward a negotiated settlement under the Agreed Framework.)