Seoul Nuclear Summit to Pressure NK Return to Talks

Kim Young-jin

Staff Reporter

South Korea's hosting of the second Nuclear Security Summit, scheduled for 2012, will pressure North Korea to return to the six-party talks on its denuclearization, a North Korea expert said Wednesday.

"It will impact North Korea in that they'll have to listen to what the international community is demanding. This (pressure) might cause them to comply with the six-party talk resolutions," Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul, told The Korea Times on Wednesday.

At the inaugural summit in Washington, D.C. earlier this week, South Korea was backed unanimously by the leaders of the 47 participating nations as the host of the next meeting.

The announcement, Yoo believes, will bring China and Russia into closer cooperation with the United States, South Korea and Japan in their joint vision for a denuclearized North.

"China is, of course, one of the 'G-2' superpowers, so with the South hosting the conference, China, given its growing global status, may use the opportunity to work harder to persuade North Korean leaders to comply with the talks," he said.

As for Russia, Yoo says the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) agreement signed by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev will motivate it to step up its role in the six-party process.

Under the agreement, the two countries will reduce their deployed strategic warheads to 1,500 from 2,200 and slash their number of missiles and launchers.

"Russia has not been a main player on this issue ― even though it is one of the six-party members," he said. "But considering its agreement with the U.S. committing to reducing their nuclear weapons, it'll have more reason to pressure the North to rejoin the denuclearization process."

Cheong Wa Dae has said North Korea would be welcome at the nuclear summit, if progress is made in the six-party talks.

If the North were to accept such terms, an invite to the international conference would provide confirmation that the South and the other members of the talks would hold up their end of such bargains, Yoo said.

Last year, President Lee extended a "Grand Bargain" under which the North, in exchange for the ending of its nuclear ambitions, would be provided security and economic assistance by the five other members of the talks.

Since taking office in early 2008, Lee has maintained a tough line on the North, ending unconditional aid and saying its resumption depends on Pyongyang progressing toward denuclearization.

But Yoo suggested the tone between the neighboring countries could change as a result of the South's growing prominence on the international stage.

Referring to it's hosting of the G-20 summit this year in addition to the 2012 nuclear talks, he said South Korea "may become more flexible or pragmatic in dealing with North Korea. Perhaps then the North would react to South Korean offers in a more positive way."

Its integral role in issues related to North Korea along with its status as a non-nuclear state makes the South an ideal host for the nuclear security summit, which will reportedly focus on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, Yoo said.

"We are one of the countries with the capability to develop nuclear weapons anytime if we decided to do so; therefore I think we can show leadership by continuing our position of not possessing nuclear weapons while developing nuclear energy in a peaceful way," he said.

"Meanwhile, we can try to persuade to countries with nuclear weapons to reduce their number of weapons and their level of danger in the coming years."