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but didn’t specify the time or location. (KCNA/Yonhap News)

By Kang Tae-ho, senior staff writer

After North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reached an “important conclusion” in an extended session of the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Workers’ Party, Pyongyang appears poised to go ahead with a nuclear test. The North has often made its final decision on matters related to the armed forces or national defense in the CMC.

There is also a trigger clause in Resolution 2087 passed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Jan. 22. According to this clause, if North Korea moves to launch another rocket or conduct a nuclear test, the UNSC is supposed to respond automatically with significant action. This is the moment when the storm clouds of war began to gather once again over the Korean peninsula.

After the UNSC passed the recent resolution, the US opened the doors to a return to the six-party talks and asked North Korea to make the right choice. In response, North Korea announced that it would be going ahead with a nuclear test regardless and called for North-US talks for peace on the Korean peninsula. This could be seen as a conflict between the US’s stance of “negotiations under threat of sanctions” and the North’s position of “negotiations under threat of a nuclear test.” Either way, it appears that, with a head-on collision looming, there is little that diplomacy can accomplish.

The current situation is much more severe than at the time of the first and second nuclear tests. Shortly after the first test in Oct. 2006, diplomatic efforts by South Korea and China had the effect of heading off further testing. This led to North Korea-US talks in Berlin and Geneva, and ultimately created the opportunity for the Sep. 19 Joint Statement (2005).

Following the second test in May 2009, China actively mediated through contact between the US and the North in New York in July, and former US president Bill Clinton made a trip to the North in August of that year. After this, Pyongyang halted its moves to launch a long-range missile and even sent a special delegation to South Korea at the time of the death of former president Kim Dae-jung. All this created a mood for negotiations.

While the North Korea of the past has not gone beyond hinting that it could conduct an additional nuclear test or a follow-up missile test, the North Korea of today has declared it is in a “full-scale confrontation in its conflict with the US.” There is a possibility that North Korea will crank up its military brinkmanship and drag the peninsula to the brink of war.

To use the phraseology of the Chosun Sinbo, the official publication of a pro-North organization in Japan, Pyongyang is treating its request for peace talks with the US as the “final showdown” in the 50 years of the Korean War.

According to the logic of hardliners such as Chun Young-woo, South Korea’s presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security, tough sanctions should be implemented that make it hard for the North to get by in order to force them to choose between nuclear weapons and survival. In fact, the additional sanctions adopted by the UNSC permit the possibility of a naval blockade based on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which deals with the use of military force.

However, the more we engage in such action, the more Pyongyang will ratchet up tensions. The North has already expressed through its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the organization that deals with South Korea, that it would regard additional sanctions such as a naval blockade as a declaration of war. In the end, we will be forced to stand at the crossroads and decide whether to move toward peace or toward war.

After the second nuclear test in May 2009, in the process of debating sanctions against the North that took place inside China, the Chinese leadership settled on the course of disassociating the North Korean nuclear issue from North Korea itself, deciding that the stability of North Korea is in China’s strategic interest. China will choose the survival of North Korea.

There are those who hope and believe that the ultimate resolution will be found through negotiations. The problem is the question of what will be done, and by whom. Experts are saying that there are no alternatives to a strategic intervention by the US and China.

In 2010, amid armed clashes between the North and South, such as the sinking of the Cheonan warship and the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, a summit meeting in Washington between the heads of the US and China was all it took to open the door for negotiations between the US and North Korea toward resumption of the six-party talks and for dialogue between the North and the South.

The point is that, while another nuclear test will certainly lead to additional sanctions, the US has no choice but to make a deal with China. This will allow China to take an active role in diplomatic mediation to bring North Korea and the US to the bargaining table, on the condition that China consents to strong sanctions. In this sense, a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Chinese Secretary General Xi Jinping may be the way out of the dilemma before a North Korean nuclear test drags the region toward a state where an armed clash is inevitable.

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