29 September 2008 : Hankyoreh
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill is going to Pyongyang at a time when North Korea says it is going to restart the reprocessing facility at Yongbyon. North Korea, in the meantime, has proposed to Seoul that the two have military talks. If Hill goes to Pyongyang, the interpretation that could be made is that it is not North Korea’s intention to shut and lock the door to dialogue even though it has declared it is restoring a nuclear facility in the wake of the failure to see itself removed form the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list and even though it has halted all dialogue with the South Korean administration of President Lee Myung-bak.
North and South Korea and the United States all need to have a flexible attitude and work to reinstate the dialogue to overcome the current nuclear crisis and the stalemate between North and South.
The nuclear verification issue that stands between the North and the United States is not without room for negotiation. The Washington Post recently wrote that the United States requested of the North “‘full access to all materials’ at sites that might have had a nuclear purpose in the past.” That is what the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations and North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Pak Kil Yon was talking about September 27 when, in a speech to the UN, he said the verification consistent with international standards demanded by the United States is “the same as the International Atomic Energy Agency’s demands for ‘special inspections’” that led to the North’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the nineties.
China and Russia think this is excessive and there are voices saying the same even in the United States, so the situation does call for a need to adjust the level of its demands. It is in this sense that if the North accepts a visit by Hill, when it is refusing to allow both access to the areas not in the declaration and the taking of samples from the Yongbyon nuclear facility, one can presume the United States has made additional concessions. Among the experts, one possibility being discussed is a compromise plan in which the United States would yield on the issue of access to undeclared sites and engage in verification only of sites that were on the North’s declaration list, and the North would allow for the taking of samples at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. We would hope the United States and the North realize that it helps no one to waste time waiting for the next American administration for the opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue, and that they would work to produce a new agreement.
We need to consider the North’s intentions in proposing working-level military talks with the South. Its primary goal is considered to be criticism of the way private South Korean groups have been releasing anti-North propaganda leaflets, but that is something it could do without meeting. So the fact the North still wants to talk directly could be read as an expression of its desire to resume the inter-Korean dialogue that has been interrupted since the inauguration of the new administration in the South. South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo expressed the right attitude when he said he hopes those talks “become the point of departure for future improvements in inter-Korean relations.” The two Koreas need to use the military talks as an opportunity that leads to greater inter-Korean dialogue.
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