hankyoreh

Cho Tae-yong

By Kang Tae-ho, senior staff writer

North Korea is signaling to Seoul that it wants to resume dialogue. Meanwhile, the US and China are contacting other countries to get the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue moving again.

Commenting on the recent cancellation of planned inter-Korean talks, North Korean Workers’ Party office newspaper Rodong Sinmun made a call on June 18 for resuming dialogue.

“Rather than obstructing the development of North-South relations by focusing on pointless things, the authorities in South Choson [Korea] need to be following the path of reconciliation and reunification,” the piece said.

In an editorial titled “Going Forward with the Banner of the People’s Unity Held High,” the newspaper proclaimed, “The failure of this long-awaited opportunity for dialogue by North and South Korean authorities is connected to the South Choson authorities’ failure to speak for the [Korean] people.”

Jang Jae-on, chairman of the North Korean religious group Korean Council of Religionists, also reportedly expressed his dismay over the breakdown while speaking in Beijing on June 13 to figures from the Korean Conference on Religion and Peace, a group representing South Korea’s seven main religions. Pyon Jin-hung, the conference’s director, quoted Jang as expressing “hope for resumption of inter-Korean dialogue.”

Meanwhile active diplomatic efforts are under way to arrange talks between the North Korean and US governments and a resumption of the six-party talks.

Speaking at a June 17 briefing after an announcement of the White House’s position the day before, US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki suggested that Pyongyang’s latest offer for high-level talks was nothing new.

In response to a question on whether she viewed the proposal as different from past ones, Psaki said there had been “dozens if not hundreds [of offers]…depending on how far you go back.”

But when asked whether the US was still open to bilateral talks as part of the six-party talks process, Psaki answered, “Correct. But the key piece here is that they need to take credible steps to move towards concrete denuclearization.”

Her remarks suggest that the ability to bridge the difference between Pyongyang’s demand for unconditional talks and Washington’s demand for “credible steps” will determine how the situation proceeds.

Psaki also noted that the South Korean and Japanese representatives for the six-party talks were meeting later in the week with Glyn Davies, the State Department’s special representative on North Korea policy.

“This will, of course, be a big topic of conversation,” she said, referring to the call for “credible steps.”

Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs and chief representative at the six-party talks, left the country on June 19 for a trilateral meeting with the US and Japan, with plans to visit China on June 21. Meanwhile, Kim Kye-kwan, North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, is scheduled to have strategic dialogue on June 19 with Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs Zhang Yesui.

The moves had some observers speculating that Washington and Beijing may be spearheading preliminary discussions toward a resumption of the six-party talks.

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