Decision processes and the acquisition of nuclear energy by the Democratic People´s Republic of [North] Korea

The author states that since its inception North Korea (NK) has been a closed system, self-sustaining, selecting alone its external interactions. It maintains a military establishment disproportionate to its needs, aggravating its economic self-reliance. The country lacks sufficient energy; it seeks to install nuclear-energy power stations. NK´s policy makes it an outcast of the international system, assuring complexity in any agreements reached. These factors also complicate NK´s relationship to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The plutonium yield of NK´s reactors is insufficiently accounted for, leading the International Atomic Energy Agency to exercise its right to inspect in-country facilities. NK wavers on permitting the IAEA to inspect, leading to a stand-off with the UN. Resolution of the problem draws in the United States who, together with South Korea and occasionally China, Russia and Japan, consult on how to influence change. This implicates NK´s political, economic, and technological status. Negotiations are then interrupted by unforeseen developments, exacerbating the complexity factor-one tending to destabilize any system in the process of restabilization. The analysis may help specialists find the unforeseen in technological applications such as risk management, the design of expert systems, process and production control