This is from a New York Times editorial from November 21, 1993, titled “North Korea’s Opening.”

Nervous commentators fear that North Korea is about to develop nuclear weapons, leading them to urge immediate sanctions or even bombing raids to take out the regime’s nuclear facilities. But President Clinton is adopting a sound diplomatic strategy for coaxing North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions . . .
Impatient hawks have urged tougher measures, like bombing North Korea’s nuclear facilities. But U.S. intelligence suspects the North may have secret sites. If so, they cannot be targeted.
Others urge immediate imposition of sanctions by the United Nations. While North Korea’s economy is one of the most self-sufficient in the world, it does depend on imported oil for 10 percent of its energy needs. An oil cutoff would require cooperation from China both in the Security Council and on its border with North Korea.
But neither Beijing nor Seoul wants to see North Korea collapse, sending refugees or its army spilling across their borders. So sanctions will be applied only as a last resort.
That’s why Mr. Clinton is rightly resisting pressure to get tough with Pyongyang. Instead, he’s taking a calculated political risk that the North means what it says. But Pyongyang should not be under any illusion: if it continues to balk, tougher measures are sure to follow.

And those tougher measures never materialized, naturally, because North Korea got nuclear weapons, which changes everything.