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| North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over a meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party. Kim made an "important" decision regarding the communist state's security and sovereignty at the meeting, a news report said. The (North) Korean Central News Agency did not specify when or where the meeting was held. / Yonhap |
Few options to block 3rd nuclear test
By Kim Tae-gyu
North Korea's young leader Kim Jong-un is threatening the world with the old-style brinkmanship he was bequeathed from his dead father and grandfather.
By all appearances, Pyongyang is weeks, if not days, away from its third nuclear test, experts said after its media reported Sunday that Kim had made "an important decision" on the North's sovereignty.
As with his late father Kim Jong-il's brand of brinkmanship, the younger Kim's action leaves South Korea and its ally the United States with few new options.
The government sent Lim Sung-nam, its chief nuclear envoy, for consultations with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei in Beijing late Sunday.
A close aide to President-elect Park Geun-hye told The Korea Times that "strong" action will be taken against the North, if it goes ahead with the test. "We, together with the rest of the international community, will follow up on United Nations resolutions."
The latest U.N. sanction was a compromise between Washington and Beijing and is regarded as a rehash of the previous one and doesn't include a military option.
"China was not happy with Pyongyang's wanton behavior," he said. "I hope it will help prevent the North from conducting a nuclear test." He added, however, that China did not commit to any action during a visit by Park's envoy.
The U.S. has sent the USS San Francisco, a Los Angeles class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine that has Tomahawk cruise missiles, to the East Sea to conduct a joint drill with the South Korean Navy.
This is the first U.S. nuclear sub dispatch since 1994 at the height of the first North Korean nuclear crisis.
Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, ruled out a military option, talking during an interview with Yonhap about sanctions similar to the one taken in 2005 to freeze North Korean transactions at the Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank.
"The nuclear test could come at any time now," Prof. Kim Yong-hyun at Dongguk University said.
Prof. Yang Moo-jin at the University of North Korean Studies also sees that "Kim Jong-un's important decision at the Worker's Party gathering should be about a nuclear detonation. The communist state wants to demonstrate that it is 100 percent ready," he said.
"The chances are that the test will happen in mid-February timed for the anniversary of the birthday of the previous leader Kim Jong-il, which falls on Feb. 16."
Last week, the North was found to have installed screens at its nuclear test site in its Northeastern territory of Punggye-ri, which analysts say is a clear sign that a nuclear test is imminent.
As the sense of crisis rises on the provocative action in the offing, President Lee Myung-bak visited the country's situation room, an underground bunker at Cheong Wa Dae, Sunday, and issued instructions to prepare for any North Korean aggression.
"Seoul and Washington can reiterate that the Korean Peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons," Prof. Kim said. "But that would be just political rhetoric having no impact."
"Otherwise, they can make some clandestine offer like bilateral talks between the U.S. and the North or food aid. But those scenarios are not that plausible, either."
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson said on Saturday that Pyongyang should refrain from further nuclear tests and missile launches if it expects the U.S. to engage in dialogue with it.
Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at Seoul National University's Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, said the North would not accept such a conditional proposal.
"The brinkmanship of the North is basically about managing the North itself for internal control and political security rather than about seeking any benefits from the outside world," Chang said.
"At a time when the control of Kim Jong-un is not that strong compared to his father and grandfather, the Northern regime wants to strengthen the system via brinkmanship. Would they give up the strategy for some food aid?"
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