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By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Christopher Hill, said that the US is ready for talks with North Korea if Pyongyang is ready to negotiate and take steps toward denuclearization.

During the interview Hill was asked, “The second Obama administration continues to maintain its so called ‘strategic patience’ policy toward North Korea from its first team. What do you think about the current US policy toward North Korea?” He answered, “I don’t really blame the Obama administration but I blame North Korea. The problem is that North Korea is not interested in talks. The US is prepared for talks if we saw some results”. The interview took place in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC on June 25.

Hill also said, “In the past North Korea said that talks had already taken place. The US responded that North Korea had already repudiated past agreements. If North Korea understands these concerns and states that talks may be positive for both countries, then real discussions may take place”.

With regard to North Korea’s attitude, Hill added, “North Korea is just saying that they are in favor of dialogue only because China is telling them to say so. The US has no ability to understand what they mean by that, therefore it is not a serious proposal. North Korea clearly doesn’t want to talk. They are only minimally responsive to the Chinese. In diplomacy you don’t just sit at the table and hope for something good to happen. You have to work ahead of time so when you sit at the table good things happen. I am not seeing effort put in ahead of time. I don’t think North Korea is serious”.

Hill, who previously led the signing of the September 19 Joint Statement in 2005 and is now the Dead of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, said “I am not enthusiastic about talks with North Korea right now unless I can see a purpose to the discussions. In 2005 I saw a purpose. Today in 2013 it’s still to be determined. I am not opposed to dialogue, but talks have to have a purpose, especially given that North Korea unilaterally claimed they won’t abide by the previous agreement. That’s the problem”.

When asked about persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, Hill said, “We should encourage North Korea to understand that we will not ever come to accept them as any kind of nuclear power. I think that’s very important. We continue to take tough measures against North Korea so they understand they can choose a future or nuclear weapons. They cannot have both. I think if they understand that their future with nuclear weapons is far much worse than without them, maybe we can convince them. That is why so much focus is on China”.

He said that if talks with North Korea start again, they should come back on the basis of the agreement already reached in the six-party talks. Hill said, “If they come back on the basis of restarting the six-party talks, that’s fine. The problem is that when the six-party talks ended North Korea did not give us enough verification. The lack of verification was a problem because all of these kinds of talks have a mechanism for verification, but in this case it was not sufficient. So I think the logical thing to do is to try to work on verification”.

Considering the reason behind failure of the six-party talks, Hill said, “North Korea said we can verify the shut down and disablement of the plutonium processing facilities. That was important. We already knew what they did in Yongbyun with respect to the plutonium. What we need is the ability to check on site that was related to our concerns about enrichment. So we needed to verify the presence or absence of that. That was big problem in the fall of 2008”.

The US, South Korea, and Japan’s top nuclear negotiators last week stressed the need for “stronger obligations” on North Korea before any resumption of talks than what was agreed in the Feb. 29 agreement with Washington last year. Regarding this, Hill said, “I think it is the correct position and it is not a precondition”.

When asked about the Park Geun-hye administration’s trust-building process, Hill answered, “I know why you are asking this, but I will not comment on it since the US-South Korean alliance is in a good place”.

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