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Jan. 7. (Yonhap News)

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

On Jan. 7, South Korea and the US decided to irregularly have meetings among high-level to assess the situation in North Korea. The meetings are intended to provide a forum to intensely deliberate the situation in the North following the execution of Jang Song-thaek and to take preemptive action according to developments on the Korean peninsula. With reports suggesting that measures to speed up change in North Korea will also be discussed in these meetings, there is expected to be considerable controversy.

At a press conference after the bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry at the US State Department building in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said, “We decided to hold consultations about the situation in North Korea a little more often and with a little more intensity,” Yun said. “We also agreed to pursue various kinds of talks, including not only bilateral talks between US and South Korea but also other small group meetings with other countries.”

“As far as what we mean by ‘in-depth discussions on the North Korean situation,’ it can be understood in connection with our policy approach of trying to elicit faster change from North Korea, based on an analysis of the situation as it unfolds,” said a senior government official on condition of anonymity in a meeting with Washington correspondents on the same day. “There are a number of ways to respond to North Korean nuclear weapons, including the six-party talks and UN sanctions. Since there are limitations to dealing with the North Korean nuclear weapons issue by itself, we are making another effort to lead North Korea to change from the perspective of viewing this as a North Korean issue.”

It is highly unusual for a senior government official to use the expression “lead North Korea to change” while explaining the establishment of a US-ROK consultative body to assess the situation in the North. It is not difficult to predict that the North Korean authorities, who are quite touchy in regard to their regime, will not react in a positive way. Even if US and American diplomats had engaged in such discussions, it would be customary for them to express this obliquely, such as by saying that they had agreed to work on maintaining the stability of the situation in North Korea.

But that was not all. When Yun met with correspondents after his conference with Kerry in Washington on Jan. 7, he said, “The execution of Jang Song-thaek reflects how unpredictable the leader of North Korea is, and the situation inside the North is in a state of flux.”

While the senior government official declined to answer a reporter who asked whether the question of a sudden change in the North had been discussed in the meeting between US and South Korean diplomats, the official did say that such a topic couldn‘t be ruled out. This is the kind of remark that North Korean officials could easily take as a provocation.

Nevertheless, it is not certain if the South Korean government official’s remarks about “trying to elicit faster change in North Korea” are a direct reference to pushing for regime change in Pyongyang as Washington and Seoul did during the administration of former US president George W. Bush. Instead, the remarks appear to be more closely connected to the context of the “formation of a foundation for unification of the Korean peninsula,” which South Korean President Park Geun-hye announced during her New Year press conference.

Yun addressed this during the press conference. “The US and South Korea agreed to strengthen strategic cooperation to bring about sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula that transcends the nuclear issue, and beyond that to create the foundation for peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula that President Park mentioned during her New Year’s press conference,” the minister said, explaining that this was why they had decided to hold the consultations to assess the situation in North Korea.

The comments made by a senior government official on condition of anonymity are consistent with this. When asked what kind of policies could lead North Korea to change, this official said, “There could be the standard methods dealing with the North Korean government, there could be methods dealing with the North Korean people, and there could be a variety of formats for achieving those things.” The official also said that South Korea would not be applying these policies independently, but that they would be pursued in a way that would allow the participation of the international community, including the US, China, and the UN. However, it is very unlikely that China will agree with the approach outlined by the US and South Korea.

The US appears to have had slightly different reasons for agreeing to hold meetings of high-ranking officials on an irregular basis to assess the situation in North Korea. The Obama administration is reportedly paying close attention to the instability of the regime in North Korea following the execution of Jang Song-thaek around the end of 2013. During an interview with ABC on Dec. 15, John Kerry said that Jang’s execution revealed the rashness and the instability of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

“To have a nuclear weapon, potentially, in the hands of somebody like Kim Jong-un just becomes even more unacceptable,” Kerry said. “We need to factor that into the urgency of getting China, Russia, Japan, South Korea to stay on the same page and to put as much effort into the denuclearization as possible.”

“The US government already had some degree of anxiety about the new regime in North Korea,” a South Korean government official said. “When you add the execution of Jang Song-thaek to the mix, the US appears to be responding even more acutely than before to developments in the North.”

But there are concerns that Seoul and Washington’s new policy direction may further weaken the framework of the six-party talks, which have not been held for more than five years. Not only could the North use this as an excuse to show less interest in the six-party talks, but it could also overlap with the channels of dialogue that already exist between the chief envoys to the six-party talks. While the government official said that it has not yet been decided what the format of the North Korean situational assessment meetings will be, the official noted that they could involve officials who are more senior than the six-party talks envoys. “We will start out with the US and South Korea, and if necessary we can add China and other countries,” the official added.

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