In April 1996, President Bill Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam met on Jeju Island and proposed four-way peace talks with North Korea and China. This offer—coming only a year and a half after the signing of the bilateral Agreed Framework deal between Washington and Pyongyang—marked the first and only time since 1954 that the United States actively and publicly proposed peace discussions with North Korea.

Despite having sought peace talks with the United States for decades, North Korea took over a year to respond. When it finally engaged, it demanded U.S. troop withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula be put on the agenda. The U.S. side rejected this demand, and the talks sputtered. Several months later, North Korea launched a Taepodong rocket over Japan, causing the focus of the talks to shift toward its missile program and discussions of peace to fall by the wayside.

On March 17, USIP hosted a discussion of the Four Party Talks, including why the United States decided to propose these talks after 40 years of disengaging from North Korea, why the talks failed, and what lessons these talks may have for future attempts at peace discussions. The event included a panel of three leading Korea experts who served as part of the U.S. delegation during the Four Party Talks.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with #4PartyTalksUSIP

Panelists

Frank Aum, moderator
Senior Expert, North Korea, U.S. Institute of Peace

Robert Carlin 
Nonresident Fellow, Stimson Center; former Chief of the Northeast Asia Division, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State

Philip Yun 
President and Chief Executive Officer, World Affairs Council of Northern California; former Senior Policy Advisor for the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, Department of State

Chip Gregson 
Senior Advisor, Avascent International; former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs, Department of Defense

Related Publications

Three Conditions for Successful Engagement with North Korea

Three Conditions for Successful Engagement with North Korea

Monday, March 25, 2024

By: Mark Tokola

The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a significant crippling of the decades-long U.S. pressure-based approach toward North Korea. The strategy of isolating and pressuring North Korea through United Nations Security Council resolutions to compel its nuclear disarmament in exchange for providing normalized relations, economic aid and sanctions relief may or may not ever have been a winning strategy, but now is no longer viable. The strategy required cooperation among the United States, South Korea, China and Russia, but this now seems a distant prospect.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

Building Trust through Health Cooperation with North Korea

Building Trust through Health Cooperation with North Korea

Monday, March 18, 2024

By: Kee B. Park

The United States needs to address the existing trust deficit with North Korea if it wants to coexist peacefully with that country. Trust building through health cooperation may be the least contentious way politically and the most likely to succeed. However, engagement on health and humanitarian assistance with North Korea, like security negotiations, has been undermined by geopolitics.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

Climate Change as a Path to Engagement with North Korea

Climate Change as a Path to Engagement with North Korea

Monday, March 11, 2024

By: Troy Stangarone

Since North Korea broke off talks with the United States after their 2019 meeting in Stockholm, progress in engaging Pyongyang on its nuclear weapons and other issues has stalled. The pandemic likely played a significant role in cooling engagement, but Pyongyang’s growing relationship with Russia has further reduced its incentives to engage with the United States.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

Increasing Stability in a Deterrence Relationship with North Korea

Increasing Stability in a Deterrence Relationship with North Korea

Monday, March 4, 2024

By: Adam Mount

A Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons remains a critical U.S. national security interest, but it is now a long-term interest. Because there is little possibility of disarming the regime in Pyongyang at an acceptable cost in the foreseeable future, the United States-South Korea alliance needs a strategy to coexist peacefully with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

View All Publications