hankyoreh

With North Korea and the United States engaged in a war of wills over a verification agreement and the delisting of North Korea from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, North Korea has raised its pressure on the United States.

North Korea requested yesterday that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency working at the Yongbyon nuclear facility remove the seals and observation equipment from its reprocessing facility. This is the strongest measure North Korea has taken since it suspended work on disabling the plant on August 14.

Since suspending work to disable the plant, North Korea has engaged in acts that have been strongly symbolic rather than substantive, such as temporarily removing the seals under the eye of the IAEA and U.S. inspectors, pushing related equipment into the facility and resealing it.

This time is different in that North Korea has officially requested the removal of the seals and actually removed them. Experts have pointed out that if North Korea were really going to restart the Yongbyon facility, from a technical standpoint, the reprocessing facility would be the first facility to restart.

Even this time, however, the North moderated the level of its actions. It drew the line at saying it would conduct tests at the reprocessing facility, but the tests would have nothing to do with nuclear materials. This is a message that the North will not immediately begin reprocessing of spent fuel rods, which the United States and others would consider a fatal violation of the denuclearization agreement.

Moreover, North Korea’s seal removal request was not made directly to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna or the states participating in the six-party talks, nor did it demand the withdrawal of IAEA or U.S. inspectors from Yongbyon. This basically means North Korea has not made official to the international community its plan to restart the Yongbyon facility. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei stressed yesterday that there has yet been no change in the “shut-down” status of the Yongbyon facility.

At least thus far, the North is following a hard-line--soft-line two-sided stratagem in which it could go either way, with both negotiations and pressure on the United States in mind, rather than making a lightening-quick unilateral decision to restart the facility.

The problem is how the United States will respond at a time when U.S. hardliners have to be raising their heads. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said after bilateral talks with South Korean chief negotiator Kim Sook in New York on Sunday (local time) that the situation was very difficult, but stressed that the focus was on finding a way to move negotiations along.

A dramatic “compromise” is possible if the United States, taking into consideration North Korea’s repeated refusal of the existing verification plan, produces an amended draft with a relaxed verification plan, and China -- the chair nation of the six-party talks -- uses this to begin work on persuading the North to agree to the new plan.

On the other hand, if South Korea and the United States respond to North Korea’s repeated provocations by suspending aid to the North, citing as grounds the July agreement by the lead negotiators of the six-party talks linking economic and energy aid to the North with North Korea deactivating the Yongbyon facility, a “clash” would be unavoidable.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young warned in a briefing yesterday that if North Korea continues work to restore the facility, it would influence economic and energy aid, which corresponds to the deactivation of the plant. Prior to this, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official told a reporter from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on September 19 that since the real nature of the United States had once again become clear, North Korea no longer wished or expected to be taken off the U.S. terrorism blacklist, and all it needed to do was go its own way. Pyongyang boasted that it could restart the Yongbyon facility if things did not work out as it liked.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]