hankyoreh

from left: Kim Kye-kwan of North Korea

“This round of talks will serve as an important connection.”

This remark, made by Kim Sook, South Korea’s top negotiator to the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, at the Incheon International Airport yesterday as he left to attend the next round of six-party negotiations in China, defines the characteristic of this round of negotiations. Kim’s remark indicates that the new round of talks, scheduled to start today, could finalize the second stage of the September 19 Joint Declaration -- nuclear declaration, disablement and aids of economy and energy -- and persuade North Korea to move into the third stage -- nuclear dismantlement. However, the talks are also at an important crossroads because of the presidential transition taking place in the United States.

Each nation has a stake in the success of the talks. North Korea is expected to try to create a framework for bilateral discussions with the United States after U.S. President-elect Barack Obama takes office by pushing many parts of its stage two denuclearization pledges into the stage three. On the contrary, South Korea and Japan are likely to try to get increasingly accurate clarifications on the North’s denuclearization pledges and construct a kind of safety valve for themselves by preventing the six-party talks from losing their appeal amid the impending framework of bilateral discussions between the United States and North Korea. The United States is likely to focus on creating space for the incoming Obama administration and can be expected to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue calmly. It is also likely that a date for completion of stage two of the September 19 Joint Declaration will be set.

Owing to the mixed strategies at the talks, it will probably be unavoidable that the participating nations will clash over the core agenda of how to adopt a document for verifying North Korea’s nuclear declaration. South Korea and Japan have wanted the six nations to agree on a method for the extraction of soil samples. But North Korea has publicly said it would only allow international inspectors to site visits, document confirmation and interviews with its technicians, as agreed with the United States in Pyongyang on October 1-3. The United States has repeatedly emphasized that the “only agenda” for this round of talks will be verification.

Officially, a discussion in Singapore on December 4-5 between North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Hill over the “documentation of verification” was believed to have made little progress. But the circumstances seemed to differ a bit beneath the surface. On December 6, a spokesperson at the North Korean Foreign Ministry picked “achievement of common ground on the verification issue” as one of the basic goals for the talks. After the Singapore meeting, North Korean Foreign Minister Kim said, “Sampling is an issue about the method of verification and we should have more discussions.” That indicates that there is “room for compromise.”

With regard to the issue of readjusting the timetable for nuclear disablement as well as economic and energy aid, the six nations are likely to comprise and agree that the task can be completed by the end of March 2009 by allowing New Zealand and others to provide 200,000 tons of heavy oil, in place of Japan, which wants the North to release information on Japanese citizens abducted by the North in the 1970s and 80s. The compromise would be within the scope of the scheme constructed by South Korea, the United States and Japan. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused Japan of not providing its share of heavy fuel oil as agreed and said the North would not “associate with” Japan. Still, the North did not go so far as to say that Japan should be deprived of its seat at the six-party talks, indicating that North Korea is not willing to allow the issue to disrupt the framework of the six-party talks.

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