Although there are many tumultuous places in the world, North Korea is among the worst. President Bush's "Axis of Evil" for a variety of reasons. It has had a succession of unpredictable dictators. In addition, many of its citizens are starving. However, surely the biggest threat to the world from North Korea is its nuclear program. Since the 1980's, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) has been working on its nuclear program on and off. Numerous times the U.S. has made agreements with the country, but each time the North feels at all threatened, or for no reason at all, it retaliates and "shakes its fist at the world" by restarting its enrichment program. For example in 1994, the United States created the Agreed Framework in which the DPRK would halt its nuclear program in exchange for free fuel and non-nuclear energy reactors. Later, it was found that they were secretly enriching uranium, so the energy exchange was stopped. In return, the DPRK dismissed the monitors, and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. At any time, North Korea could send weapons of mass destruction to South Korea or possibly even to the Pacific Coast of the U.S. On 12 December 2012, North Korea launched a Ballistic Weapons test missile. The United Nations Security Council did not like this, so they passed resolution number 2087, on 22 January 2013, condemning the test. In a provocative response, the North Korean National Defence Commission said, "In the new phase of our century-long struggle against the United States, we do not hide the fact that various satellites and long-range missiles that we will continue to launch and high-level nuclear tests we will conduct will target our sworn enemy, the United States." On 11 Feb 2013, North Korea did conduct a high level nuclear test, sending shockwaves through the international community. As this is very current news, please keep up with this topic prior to the conference.
