Difficult resumption of talks

For the past 20 years, the United States and South Korea have employed various strategies, including diplomatic engagement, intentional neglect, and coercive sanctions, to deal with North Korea, but without remarkable success.

By Tong Kim

For the past 20 years, the United States and South Korea have employed various strategies, including diplomatic engagement, intentional neglect, and coercive sanctions, to deal with North Korea, but without remarkable success.

The failure of these efforts has led to the emergence of a de facto nuclear North Korea that imposes a direct threat to the stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula and a challenge to the weakening relevance of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

North Korea is a self-declared nuclear state that has conducted two nuclear tests and extracted enough plutonium for six to eight bombs, according to a widely accepted assessment. Since the breakdown of the six-party talks in 2009, the North has also continued launching several ballistic missiles, some of which might serve as a delivery system for nuclear warheads in the future.

What’s more, the North is running an active uranium enrichment program, which could eventually produce uranium bombs to add to Pyongyang’s plutonium-based nuclear arsenal. Unchecked, North Korea might become a full-fledged nuclear state, and it has no political or security incentives to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

Recently, Washington and Seoul decided to jumpstart the six-party talks in a belated diplomatic maneuver. Almost three wasteful years of Washington’s ``strategic patience” and Seoul’s ``principled policy” only increased tension in Korea, while shunning the growing danger of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program and blaming Pyongyang’s provocations.

The miscalculation and inertia on the part of the United States and South Korea brought about two deadly incidents ― the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan in March 2010 and the shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong located south of the disputed Northern Limit Line in November 2010.

Pyongyang’s Vice Foreign Minister Ri Young-ho and Seoul’s nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac met twice to discuss the resumption of the multilateral nuclear talks. Their first meeting took place in July in Bali, where the foreign ministers of both sides met briefly, mainly just greeting each other. The second meeting took place in Beijing in September as a follow up discussion.

In the meantime, Washington also had direct contact with Pyongyang through the meeting between the U.S. North Korea Policy Representative Steve Bosworth and the DPRK’s First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-kwan in New York at the end of July.

Although these meetings did not produce any concrete agreement with respect to the resumption of the six-party process, the parties explained their respective positions to each other. The North Koreans ascertained the scope of the preconditions imposed by Washington and Seoul ― which demand the suspension of all nuclear activities including the uranium enrichment program, return of IAEA inspectors, a moratorium on further missile and nuclear tests, and improvement of inter-Korean relations.

The North is not ready to accept Washington’s preconditions. It insists upon an unconditional resumption of the talks to negotiate those ``preconditions” and all other issues of denuclearization. In world politics, a party that imposes preconditions is seen as lacking genuine interest in talks. That’s why Washington does not appreciate the term ``preconditions” and it calls them ``pre-steps.”

The question for now is how to restart negotiations. Pyongyang has dropped its own preconditions ― lifting of multilateral and bilateral sanctions against the North and a peace treaty to end the technical state of war in Korea ― which it demanded of the Obama administration since Ambassador Bosworth’s visit to Pyongyang in December 2009.

During the second inter-Korean nuclear talks in Beijing, Ri was reported to have shown an interest in Seoul’s offer of ``a Grand Bargain” package solution, which Pyongyang had rejected in September 2009.

Pyongyang probably wanted to find out what was in the package to prepare for a possible discussion of the proposal if it would be taken up by the resumed six-party talks. However, this does not mean Pyongyang might shift back to its initial interest in a package deal, which it tried to pursue in the early 1990s.

Conversely, the North Koreans might think that bargaining away their selling points through a protracted piecemeal negotiation ― that is selling away one item at a time for the right price ― would be strategically more beneficial to them.

Following the two nuclear contacts between Seoul and Pyongyang and the first U.S.-DPRK meeting in New York, it is expected that there would be another direct talk between Washington and Pyongyang. Since the first meeting was held in New York, a second U.S.-DPRK meeting could be held in Pyongyang.

Washington appears reluctant to do that. At the same time, neither Washington nor Pyongyang are pressured domestically or internationally from their allies to back down on their current positions on the resumption of the six-party talks.

With big elections coming up in 2012 in Seoul and Washington, Pyongyang does not seem to be in a hurry to go back to the nuclear talks. What’s your take?

The writer is a visiting research professor at Korea University and a visiting professor at the University of North Korean Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and can be reached at tong.kim8@yahoo.com.