"That those were Reagan and Bush years doesn't bother you at all, and that those Republican Administrations didn't take any significant action to stop them doesn't hit your radar screen."
And I'm the partisan one? Jeez.
First off, let's not forget that we're talking about the DPRK. Lying, sneaking, backing out of treaties, blackmailing and threats are what they're all about. On some level it is inevitable that they would someday get nuclear weapons.
link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/northkorea/nuclear.html
"On Dec. 12, 1985, Pyongyang signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty."
"North and South Korea signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula later that year. Both sides promised, 'not to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.' They also agreed not to possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities."
"North Korea signed the IAEA safeguards agreement on Jan. 30, 1992, and ratified it four months later."
Since you appear to think Clinton "took significant action" I have to assume you define this as "getting the DPRK to sign treaties they don't intend to obey." Based on the quotes above, you can see that Reagan and Bush got them to sign lots and lots of shit, and at no point did they have to build any reactors for them in order to do it. The closest they came, was agreeing to let the Russians help them, which they'd been doing without our permission for years anyway.
Also noteworthy: "[The DPRK] asked for permission to receive assistance from the Soviets in the construction of four light water reactors to replace the graphite facilities at Yongbyon."
You suggest that graphite reactors are better for the production of weapons grade plutonium than light water reactors. All the sources I have read agree with this in principle... However it is odd that the DRPK would request to convert over to light water reactors. It becomes less odd when one reads this link. The relevant quote: “[W]hile light water reactors are not an ideal method for nuclear proliferation, they're an ideal method for HIDING nuclear proliferation, if you want the bomb but do not want to raise alarm bells.” So what do we have? We have the DPRK looking to replace older, less reliable, less capable reactors with modern, politcally correct models. The fact that they're requesting it means it's in their interests. It's not like Bill Clinton bamboozled them with some LWRs and they were like “herro? Wait a meenit heah! Dees reactah not make-uh prutonium!” Clinton basically gave them what they wanted.
To be fair, though, the LWRs Clinton promised have not been built. While he did cave in, he did it in typically Clintonian fashion, and ultimately gave them nothing, besides a whole lot of fuel oil, grain, etc.
“Research reactors = DPRK scientists trying to figure out the best hardware configurations to do gaseous diffusion on uranium fuel rods.“
Urk? Gaseous diffusion is used to increase the concentration of U235 before the fuel rods are assembled. The element used in nuclear weapons is plutonium, not uranium. It's unclear to me what method the DPRK used to obtain the plutonium needed to create weapons, but it seems that it would have to be from Russian supplied sources.
“Again, that there were any benefits at all to the 1994 agreement, you absolutely refuse to acknowledge.”
Actually I that's true. Seems to me like we spent a bunch of time and money on it, and it got us nothing at all. They have nukes, we gave them lots of oil, not much accomplished. I had thought, mistakenly, that the LWRs Clinton agreed to give them were actually running, and useful to their construction of nuclear weapons. I still think he was wrong to agree to build the LWRs, unless he really intended not to follow through, and instead to play DPRK-like games with the DPRK. If that's what his plan was, it's actually quite good.