January 2002: President George W. Bush says North Korea, Iran and Iraq form an "axis of evil" threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction. North Korea says the remarks amount to a declaration of war.
April 2002: Bush issues a memorandum stating that he will not certify North Korea's compliance with the Agreed Framework. However he allows continued U.S. funding of oil shipments.
August 2002: KEDO holds a ceremony to mark the pouring of concrete foundations for the first LWR.
October 3-5, 2002: James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, confronts Pyongyang with U.S. evidence of a covert uranium enrichment programme. North Korea responds by saying it is "entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons but other types of weapons more powerful than them in defense of its sovereignty in face of the U.S. threat."
October 16, 2002: The United States announces that North Korea admitted during Kelly's visit to having a covert programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
October 25, 2002: North Korea's Foreign Ministry says it will address U.S. concerns about its nuclear programme if the United States signs a non-aggression treaty, guarantees Pyongyang's sovereignty and pledges not to interfere in its economic development.
November 14, 2002: The United States and its allies hold a KEDO meeting in New York and decide to cut off fuel oil shipments to North Korea, beginning in December.
November 29, 2002: The IAEA calls on North Korea to open its atomic weapons programme to inspections, says it "deplored" Pyongyang's assertion it had a right to possess the weapons.
December 4, 2002: North Korea rejects the IAEA call to open its weapons programme to inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North.
December 21, 2002: The IAEA says North Korea has disabled surveillance devices the agency had placed at the five-megawatt Yongbyon research reactor.
December 22, 2002: North Korea says it has begun removing IAEA monitoring equipment from Yongbyon, drawing condemnation from the United States, South Korea, Japan and France.
(Copied without permission from CNN who copied it with permission from Reuters. Original CNN link below contains many timeline points before Jan 2002.)
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiap...timeline.reut/