The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) is an organization founded on March 15, 1995, by the United States, South Korea, and Japan to implement the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework that froze North Korea's indigenous nuclear power plant development centered at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, that was suspected of being a step in a nuclear weapons program. KEDO's principal activity is to construct two light water reactor nuclear power plants in North Korea to replace North Korea's Magnox type reactors. The original target year for completion was 2003.
Since then, other members have joined:
KEDO discussions took place at the level of a U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, South Korea's deputy foreign minister, and the head of the Asian bureau of Japan's Foreign Ministry.
The KEDO Secretariat is located in New York.
Formal ground breaking on the site for two light water reactors (LWR) was on August 19, 1997, at Kumho, 30 km north of Sinpo. The Kumho site had been previously selected for two similar sized reactors that had been promised in the 1980s by the Soviet Union, before its collapse.
Soon after the Agreed Framework was signed, U.S. Congress control changed to the Republican Party, who did not support the agreement. Some Republican Senators were strongly against the agreement, regarding it as appeasement. KEDO's first director, Stephen Bosworth, later commented "The Agreed Framework was a political orphan within two weeks after its signature".