Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea's Nuclear Program

by Siegfried S. Hecker

North Korea remains a puzzle to Americans. How did this country—one of the most isolated in the world and in the policy cross hairs of every U.S. administration during the past 30 years—progress from zero nuclear weapons in 2001 to a threatening arsenal of perhaps 50 such weapons in 2021?



Hinge Points brings readers literally inside the North Korean nuclear program, joining Siegfried Hecker to see what he saw and hear what he heard in his visits to North Korea from 2004 to 2010. Hecker goes beyond the technical details—described in plain English from his on-the-ground experience at the North's nuclear center at Yongbyon—to put the nuclear program exactly where it belongs, in the context of decades of fateful foreign policy decisions in Pyongyang and Washington.



Describing these decisions as "hinge points," he traces the consequences of opportunities missed by both sides. The result has been that successive U.S. administrations have been unable to prevent the North, with the weakest of hands, from becoming one of only three countries in the world that might target the United States with nuclear weapons. Hecker's unique ability to marry the technical with the diplomatic is well informed by his interactions with North Korean and U.S. officials over many years, while his years of working with Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani nuclear officials have given him an unmatched breadth of experience from which to view and interpret the thinking and perspective of the North Koreans.

Genres: Anthropology

384 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 10, 2023

Reviews

[Marko Beljac · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, excellent, book is a must for anybody interested in North Korea, and the North Korean nuclear programme in particular. There are some interesting tidbits here, most especially about the technical aspects of North Korea's pursuit of the bomb. Hecker's thesis is that North Korea simultaneously pursued a bomb progamme alongside a diplomatic tract to improve relations with the United States hedging its bets on what approach was best with certain key points, "hedge points," in its interactions with the US seeing it emphasise the former to the expense of the latter. Hecker argues that at these points the US missed an opportunity to pursue denuclearisation with North Korea. The book, therefore, forms an extended version of the argument first made by Hecker as a co-author in a Stanford study that compared and contrasted North Korea's technical achievements with the diplomatic record. I think this thesis is plausible, but not firmly established given the nature of the regime, up to and including the end of the Agreed Framework (which was essentially scuttled by the Bush administration, as Hecker points out). Thereafter, I am not so sure about the hedge points theory. I think the idea that North Korea was using its nuclear programme as a form of leverage to improve relations with the United States might well explain things for the 1990s, and was a thesis adopted by some at the time who thought about the issue critically (rather than just parroting propaganda), nonetheless at some point denuclearisation, understood as disarmament, became a non-starter. That is, at some point North Korea was committed to becoming and remaining a nuclear weapon state. When was that, for what reason, and how was the decision made? That's what I'd like to know. Naturally, such questions do not arise under the hedge points thesis. There isn't any doubt, however, that the US prevented significant progress being made on limiting and constraining North Korea's nuclear programme through arms control and confidence building measures, there Hecker is surely right and he is right to be especially critical of the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as the North's programme went, and continues to go, from strength to strength. This irrationality, too, needs explanation. You get the sense, not explicitly stated by Hecker, that North Korea was rational whereas the US irrational. Note that reverses the traditional picture. Whatever you think of hedge points theory, that observation surely stands. I don't think Hecker's explanation of that irrationality is correct, mainly attributing it to ideology and short-sightedness. I tend to think that Washington was using concerns about proliferation to encourage collapse of the regime, calculating it would fall and wouldn't make much technical progress sufficient to directly challenge the US either. In politics, power is more important than reason. Hecker mixes acceptance and scepticism about North Korea's technical accomplishments and pronouncements, tending to be more optimistic about the bomb side of things and less so about the missile and reentry vehicle side of things. Here you need to be careful. Yes, Hecker was the director of Los Alamos, and yes Hecker handled North Korean plutonium and visited (some) of its facilities. But that doesn't mean he's right, especially about the missile and RV aspects (here I think he is wrong). Be careful to unreflectively accept Hecker's positions because of his background. Look at the arguments, don't be biased, and weigh up the evidence.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellently written book by someone who had first hand access to the North Korean facilities and technical personnel. I came away from this account profoundly depressed at the wrong turns that got us where we are with the North Korean nuclear and missile program. There's plenty of blame to go around between the various US administrations and the misreading on the North Korean side. This should be a must read for anyone interested in understanding the failure of containing the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

[JuAn · Rating 5 out of 5]

When politics are prioritized over technical risk analysis, you get the ridiculous journey of trying to denuclearize North Korea.

[Zack Milam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author is so far up his own ass he's choking on his tongue.
No matter how informative this book may be, I cannot give it more than three stars. The author sees himself as somewhat of a hero figure for some odd reason. We get it, you're smart Dr Hecker. If only every administration had listened to your wise words. I enjoy the content for what it is, but ego is dripping from every page of this book. Really disappointed honestly as it seems this is more of a disguised autobiography about a man who thinks the world of himself and how his mind contains the only correct assumptions. Just like most academics.