A Luncheon Discussion Forum

Starting in 2001, North Korea's nuclear weapons program went from being frozen to being fully operational, culminating in the test of a nuclear weapon in October 2006 that shocked the world. U.S. policy towards North Korea during this period was marked by intense debate in Washington, as advocates of diplomacy struggled with proponents of a more confrontational approach to dealing with Pyongyang. Today, a reversal by the Bush Administration of its earlier policy has led to an agreement that has put North Korea’s nuclear program into a state of partial disablement. However, the Six-Party Talks are stalled, and some believe the talks may yet unravel. How did all of this happen? Who were the key actors in this nuclear drama and what roles did they play resolving—or contributing to—this crisis?

In a conversation with The Washington Times assistant managing editor Barbara Slavin, longtime CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy, author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (St Martin's Press, 2008), will share the perspective he has gained from more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing—including Colin Powell, John Bolton and Kim Dae-jung—as well as fourteen trips to Pyongyang. Chinoy will discuss how U.S. refusal to engage in serious diplomacy spurred Kim Jong Il to stage his nuclear breakout, and describe the subsequent reversal of course that led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation in the hope of negotiating an end to the nuclear crisis.

Friday, September 19, 2008

with

Mike Chinoy
Edgerton Fellow on Korean Security
Pacific Council on International Policy
Author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

Moderated by

Barbara Slavin
Assistant Managing Editor, The Washington Times
Author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation

About the Speakers
Mike Chinoy is the author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (St. Martin's Press, 2008). Chinoy joined the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles in July, 2006 as the Edgerton Fellow in Korean Security, focusing on security issues in North Korea, China and Northeast Asia. He previously spent 24 years as a foreign correspondent for CNN, including eight years as the network’s first bureau chief in Beijing, bureau chief in Hong Kong, and, from 2001-2006, senior Asia correspondent.

Chinoy is the author of the acclaimed book China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution, and has received numerous awards for his journalism, including the Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont awards for his coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis, and a Dupont Award for his coverage of the tsunami. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MS from Columbia University. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MS from Columbia University.


Barbara Slavin is an assistant managing editor for World and National Security of The Washington Times and the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (St. Martin's Press, 2007). Prior to joining The Times in July 2008, she was a senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today, responsible for analyzing foreign news and U.S. foreign policy. Beginning in 1996, she covered such key issues as the U.S.-led war on terrorism and in Iraq, policy toward "rogue" states and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Slavin is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and C-Span. She wrote her book on Iran as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2006 and spent October 2007-July 2008 as a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where she researched and wrote a report on Iranian regional influence, entitled “Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts Its Influence in the Middle East.”

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