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LISA MULLINS: North Korea's nuclear program first became apparent to the international community in the 1980s. But its roots stretch back decades before that, to the 1950s. The World's Jeb Sharp takes a look back.

JEB SHARP: Historian Bruce Cumings, of the University of Chicago, says in order to understand the origins of North Korea's nuclear ambitions, you have to go all the way back to what he calls the deep background of the Korean War.

BRUCE CUMINGS: The deep background almost never comes up in press commentary in the US, but the fact is, the US has been targeting North Korea with nuclear weapons going back to 1951, when we very nearly used them. Harry Truman actually issued an order to hit a couple of North Korean cities with nuclear weapons, and then this was rescinded in the context, or not carried out in the context of General MacArthur being fired in 1951.

SHARP: A few months after that, the US launched Operation Hudson Harbor, which involved training runs that simulated dropping nuclear bombs over North Korea. The United States never did use nuclear weapons against North Korea, but it didn't hold back on other bombs, Cumings says.

CUMINGS: So you have North Korea turning into a kind of mole society during the Korean War, because we just rained death and destruction on them with conventional weapons all during the war, and they had very little defense against that. So they just built hospitals and factories and schools underground, and they've been building underground ever since as about their only deterrent.

SHARP: After the war, North Korea found itself battered and isolated, and it was facing US troops just across the border. By 1958, the US was installing short range nuclear missiles in
South Korea as well. Sharon Squassoni of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says it's no surprise, really, that North Korean leaders began to pursue nuclear weapons.

SHARON SQUASSONI: Several countries had clandestine nuclear weapons programs at that time: India, Iran, Pakistan. There were many countries pursuing nuclear weapons programs. North Korea unlike many others, continued and, you know, it obviously took a page from nuclear weapons states and looked at nuclear weapons as the currency of power.

SHARP: The program was just research in the early years, but by the 1980s, US satellites identified a growing program. They spotted a reactor for making plutonium, a plant for separating plutonium, and two larger reactors still under construction. North Korea was persuaded to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, but its program continued to develop. A 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea managed to freeze the North's program for 8 years – but then it fell apart amid mutual recriminations in 2002.

SQUASSONI: The thing that provoked the North Koreans was the Bush administration going to Pyongyang in October of 2002 and saying to the North Koreans, “Look. We have evidence that you have a clandestine uranium enrichment program, and we want you to give that up. We think it violates the 1994 agreed framework.

SHARP: Whether it was a clear violation is still contested ground, but either way, Squassoni says, the result was North Korea retaliated. It kicked out international nuclear inspectors, restarted its plutonium program, and ramped up production. In October 2006, it conducted its first nuclear test. Yesterday, it conducted its second. No one's surprised, but the overall effect is stunning – a world seemingly powerless to stop a small impoverished half-nation from stockpiling the worst weapons we know. For The World, I'm Jeb Sharp.

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