NK resorts to typical brinkmanship
By Chung Min-uck
North Korea’s latest provocations reflect its old tactic of seeking to secure for itself an upper hand in any negotiation with South Korea and the United States, analysts said Tuesday.
“When the joint Seoul-Washington military drills end later this month, dialogue will likely begin to take place,” said Ko Yoo-hwan, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “The North is currently trying to increase its leverage via the latest provocations.”
A government official said, “Only after the ROK-US exercise ends on April 18 and U.S. President Barack Obama finishes his visit to Seoul in late April, we expect the North to make some kind of reconciliatory gesture.”
The U.N. condemned its latest ballistic missile launches amidst the ongoing joint military drills dubbed Foal Eagle by the allies.
The North last week threatened to carry out its fourth nuclear test, triggering a backlash from concerned countries including China, the North’s main ally and a member of the six-party talks.
The North also conducted a live-fire drill near the tensely guarded western border Monday and resumed verbal attacks on President Park Geun-hye which came more than a month after the rival Koreas agreed to halt cross-border slander during their first high-level talks.
“The North will wait and see the U.S. response to its series of provocation and decide whether to carry out another nuclear test or not,” said Ko. “The North is pressuring the U.S. to select between holding negotiations and Pyongyang’s increased nuclear capability.”
Seoul and Washington are insisting that there will be no “talks for talks’ sake” with Pyongyang, unless the reclusive regime takes concrete steps towards denuclearization.
Meanwhile, the North Tuesday continued its verbal attack on President Park.
Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the North’s Workers Party, called her an eccentric old maid, an idiot and a hen, claiming her policy on unification with North Korea is designed to hurt the North’s ideology and its socialist system.
Park, during her recent trip to Germany, called for inter-Korean exchange and cooperation to recover a sense of common identity.
She laid out a roadmap for how the two rival Koreas should work toward unification that encompasses infrastructure investment in the North, in return for scrapping its nuclear weapons programs.