hankyoreh

North Chungcheong Province

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

Senior representatives to the six-party talks from South Korea, the US, and Japan warned on Apr. 8 that North Korea would pay the price for additional nuclear testing.

Speaking with reporters after a meeting that day at the State Department in Washington, DC, Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Hwang Joon-kook said the three countries had “expressed serious dismay over the possibility of additional provocations from North Korea” and “agreed to focus united and efficient efforts on stopping them from happening.”

Hwang went on to say that the countries “made it clear that we and the international community will make [North Korea] pay the price for a nuclear test, since it would be a grave threat to international peace and security.”

The meeting on Apr. 8 came after an agreement reached at a trilateral meeting last month, with the three senior representatives meeting for the first time since last November. The focus was on reaffirming their coordination on the North Korean nuclear issue at a time when cooperation has been hurt by diplomatic frictions between Seoul and Tokyo and negotiations between Tokyo and Pyongyang.

Hwang also had a separate meeting that evening with senior Japanese representative Junichi Ihara.

Following the meeting, a senior official with the Barack Obama administration spoke to the Hankyoreh’s Washington correspondent on condition of anonymity.

“They talked about the next actions to expect from North Korea and their refusal to engage in dialogue, along with different ideas for coordination,” the official said.

Meanwhile, a press statement from the US State Department said the three countries had “restated our commitment to the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks and its core goal: the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.”

It went on to say they had “urged the DPRK to refrain from further threatening actions.”

The senior representatives also discussed the possibility of resuming dialogue with Pyongyang, although no specifics were made available. Hwang mentioned plans to “seek out different ways of resuming dialogue for the sake of practical denuclearization of North Korea,” but didn’t provide specifics.

When asked about the possibility of a resumption, the senior Obama administration official said, “That all depends on North Korea.” But the official went on to say that Pyongyang “doesn’t appear to be interested in dialogue. We’re just watching right now, but we’re also continuing to look for ways of getting dialogue started again.”

The State Department also indicated it would accept South Korea and Japan talking to North Korea.

“We likewise agreed on the importance of improvements in inter-Korean relations and a resolution of the abductions issue,” the statement said.

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