By Kim Young-jin
North Korea’s recent salvo of rhetoric including a claim to stepped-up uranium enrichment work is an apparent attempt to impel Seoul and Washington back to stalled multilateral negotiations on favorable terms, analysts said.
But the barrage may not throw regional efforts to resume six-party denuclearization talks too far off track as players appear to remain politically motivated to kick start the forum that last met in 2008, some said.
Pyongyang this week said its uranium enrichment program was progressing “apace” in a bid to power an experimental light-water reactor under construction. Days earlier, it threatened to turn the presidential palace into a sea of fire in response to South Korean military drills.
“It’s tactical,” Choi Jin-wook, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said. “They are warning: if you’re not eager to get back to talks, we have other options.”
The United States and the South have been talking with the North since July over how to resume the six-part talks. While the meetings eased tensions, the sides remain far apart over what the North must do to return to the table it stormed away from two years ago.
Its remarks on the uranium program flew in the face of the allies’ efforts to halt its enrichment activities in a verifiable manner before the talks resume. Pyongyang insists that such preconditions are roadblocks imposed by Washington.
Choi said the rhetoric showed the North’s desperation to secure food aid ahead of next year, when the Stalinist state has promised to emerge as a “strong and prosperous” nation in time for the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Kim Il-sung. Two rounds of separate talks with Seoul and Washington have failed to win any assistance.
“They are frustrated. But at the same time, they are not ready to make any concessions either. So it’s kind of a game of chicken they are playing.” The North has also called for the talks to resume under an action-for-action setup, rather than the grand bargain approach the Lee Myung-bak government wants.
Much of the international community is concerned that any aid sent there gets diverted for military purposes or to consolidate power among elites.
Choi added he did not expect the North to follow through on its threat as its first priority appeared to be food and that more time was needed for the sides to settle on acceptable terms to return to the table. Another provocation would also invite unwanted international scrutiny as it prepares to hold huge celebrations in 2012.
Bahng Tae-seop, an expert at the Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI) said that parties still appeared to want to resume the forum soon.
He pointed out that the multilateral negotiations had yet to meet during the administration of Barack Obama, after Pyongyang walked away in opposition to international sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests. Obama may want to at least to sit down with the six-parties ahead of presidential polls next year when he will try to retain the White House.
“There’s political gesturing going on under the surface to reach a common denominator to resume the talks,” he said.
Skepticism is rampant, however, over whether Pyongyang is likely to relinquish the nuclear program seen as greatest bargaining chip a view bolstered by the report of bolstered enrichment work.
Recent commercial satellite imagery has confirmed progress on the LWR at the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex. Pyongyang claims it will soon be operational though some officials doubt whether the isolated state has the capability to run it.
Despite the North’s claims that it is for civilian energy purposes, analysts worry that completion of the LWR could allow Pyongyang to claim it is operating the UEP to fuel the reactor while secretly producing uranium for nuclear weapons. The LWR would violate existing U.N. Security Council resolutions, officials say.