http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

N. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal
By Barbara Demick, Times Staff Writer


MT. KUMGANG, North Korea — From a glance at the tumbledown villages and the rusted-out railroad equipment, it would seem the North Koreans don't have much to boast about.

But if there is one undisputed point of pride in this country with a per capita income among the lowest in the world, it is the nuclear bomb.

To many North Koreans, the development of nuclear weapons vaults them into an exclusive club with the United States and China and the other great powers of the world.

"We're a nuclear power. We're not like Iraq, or Yugoslavia or Afghanistan. We can defend ourselves," boasted Kim Myong Song, a 30-year-old North Korean who was standing guard on the hiking trails at Mt. Kumgang, one of the few parts of the reclusive country open to visitors.

Pounding his fist in the air, Kim said that North Korea's nuclear weapons could demolish U.S. interests in the event of a war.

"We will turn the U.S. bases in South Korea into ashes. No U.S. base will be safe in Guam, Japan, Hawaii. Even the mainland United States won't be safe," he said.

"If we say we have nuclear weapons, you better believe it — we do," said another guard, a 34-year-old in tinted glasses who gave his name as Mr. Kim.

U.S. intelligence agencies have believed for several years that North Korea has developed a nuclear bomb. But there is disagreement about whether the government in Pyongyang can mount it on a missile and whether those missiles could reach any part of the United States.

Brian Myers, an academic and literary critic who studies North Korean literature and media, says nuclear weapons have become a key element of domestic propaganda, used by the government to convince an impoverished population that they are as well-off as anybody else despite increasing evidence to the contrary.

"Nuclear weapons are crucial to the North Koreans' sense of dignity, especially vis-a-vis the South. Without them, they are mere beggars," said Myers, who teaches in South Korea.

The North Koreans' abiding pride in their nuclear weapons is one reason it is so difficult for the government to barter them away. For more than a year, Pyongyang has boycotted six-nation talks on its nuclear program, despite offers of a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the country in exchange for denuclearization.

But over the weekend, North Korea agreed to resume the negotiations at the end of this month. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a six-day trip to Asia, said the decision was "only a start," echoing U.S. admonitions that Pyongyang must be ready to bargain when it returns to the table.

Washington is mindful that North Korea could return to the negotiations only to stall for time to reprocess more plutonium for nuclear weapons. By some estimates, North Korea may already have enough plutonium for up to nine nuclear devices.

Previous rounds of the disarmament talks have lasted two or three days, but this month's meeting may last longer, as the United States and its partners, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, will want to see concrete results before adjourning, a senior administration official said.

Peter Hayes, the head of the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, said that the more closely North Korea associates its image with nuclear weapons, the harder it will be to strike a deal.

"There is a kind of nuclear nationalism that you are seeing here," Hayes said, adding that North Korea's proximity to Hiroshima and the threat of a nuclear strike by the United States during the 1950-53 Korean War has created a mind-set in which nuclear weapons have an almost mystical power.

"For four or five decades, they have been at the other end of the nuclear barrel, so it is not surprising that they are obsessed with it," Hayes said.

At Mt. Kumgang, South Korean tour guides instruct foreign tourists not to talk to North Koreans about politics — especially not about the bomb. But the guards patrolling the hiking trails appear eager to boast about their nuclear program.

North Koreans have been taught for years that they have some mysterious, all-powerful weapon that could devastate the United States, but only recently has it been explicitly named as a nuclear bomb. Those interviewed at Mt. Kumgang said they were thrilled their government announced unequivocally this year that it had developed nuclear weapons.

"There was no celebration, but people feel really good about it," said a North Korean trail guard in her 20s, elegantly dressed in a fake Burberry jacket and matching scarf, but as belligerent as her male counterparts.
. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal

"We're not afraid of the Americans," she said, then added a note of political correctness, North Korean style, "not just because of our nuclear weapons, but because of our great general" — a reference to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"If any country has nuclear weapons, all countries should have the right to nuclear weapons," said Kim Myong Song, the 30-year-old guard, echoing another theme of the official propaganda. He said he so keenly believed in the right to nuclear weapons that "if the United States were to attack us, I'd carry a nuclear bomb in my backpack all the way to America."

By the same token, the guard said that he wished for a nuclear-free world — yet another theme of North Korean propaganda.

"But if there is nonproliferation," he said, "it should be nonproliferation for everyone."

South Korea agrees on rice aid to North ahead of nuclear talks Globe and Mail
Seoul — South Korea agreed on Tuesday to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of rice aid as the countries vowed to boost economic ties after the North announced it would end its boycott of nuclear disarmament talks. The aid agreed to early Tuesday after all-night talks between the divided Koreas is separate from incentives the South has offered the communist North to lure it back to the international arms negotiations it has refused to attend for more than a year. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday the nuclear talks will fail unless North Korea is committed to abandoning its nuclear weapons. “What we really need is a strategic decision on the part of the North that they are indeed ready to give up their nuclear weapons program,” Ms. Rice told reporters after the meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in Tokyo. “Without that, these talks cannot be successful.” Pyongyang said over the weekend it would return to the nuclear talks the week of July 25, after a meeting with the top U.S. nuclear envoy in Beijing. Seoul has prepared a significant aid proposal for the North if it returns to the arms negotiations, which were last held in June, 2004, but has refused to release details of the offer. Local media reported the proposal would be revealed at a meeting later Tuesday of South Korea's National Security Council to be chaired by President Roh Moo-hyun. A spokesman for Mr. Roh's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to directly confirm the reports but said there was movement within the presidential Blue House to publicize the plan. Opposition parties have called for transparency in dealings with the North -- especially after revelations in recent years of secret payments to Pyongyang ahead of a 2000 summit between leaders of the two Koreas that paved the way to reconciliation. Ms. Rice was scheduled to arrive Tuesday evening in Seoul and was expected to discuss the revived nuclear arms talks at a Wednesday meeting with Mr. Roh. Later this week, the chief nuclear negotiators from Japan, South Korea and the United States will meet in Seoul to co-ordinate strategy for the next round of arms talks, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said. Also Tuesday, a Chinese special envoy, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, arrived in North Korea, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported. Mr. Tang is on a goodwill trip as President Hu Jintao's personal representative. At the close early Tuesday of inter-Korean economic talks, the two sides agreed that the South would give the North raw materials to help it produce clothes, shoes and soap for internal consumption by its impoverished population. In return, the South will be given investment rights in North Korean mining operations for zinc, magnesite and coal, the sides said in a joint statement. The North and South also agreed to conduct a pilot run in October of reconnected railroad links across their heavily armed border and hold an opening ceremony for restored roads. Official contacts between the Koreas -- which still technically remain at war -- resumed in May following a break for 10 months when the North was angered by mass defections to the South. U.S. officials have insisted the United States wouldn't offer any new incentives to North Korea to persuade it to abandon its nuclear weapons -- saying they were still waiting for a response to a proposal made last year at the arms talks, which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The United States has said it will give economic incentives and diplomatic recognition to the North only after the communist nation reveals all its nuclear facilities and allows international inspectors to verify they have been dismantled. Ms. Rice on Tuesday expressed no objections to South Korea's rice donation, saying the gesture will not undercut the U.S. negotiating position heading into the six-party talks. She said South Korea was responding to “miserable conditions” in North Korea and noted that the United States itself in recent days offered 50,000 tons of food aid to the communist country.
US: no new incentives for six-party talks Xinhua
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Us Urges N. Korea To Abandon Atomic Arms Guardian Unlimited
The United States urged North Korea on Tuesday to abandon its atomic weapons program as South Korea revealed it had offered the impoverished North massive energy aid to lure it back to nuclear disarmament talks after more than a year of deadlock. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived Tuesday in Seoul for talks on the North Korea nuclear issue, said the United States wants to make the disarmament talks set to resume later this month a success. ``What we really need is a strategic decision on the part of the North that they are indeed ready to give up their nuclear weapons program,'' Rice told reporters in Japan before she arrived in Seoul. "Without that, these talks cannot be successful.'' Also Tuesday, a Chinese special envoy visited North Korea to urge it to work toward a deal in the new round of disarmament talks. After a meeting with the top U.S. nuclear envoy in Beijing, North Korea said Saturday it would return to the nuclear talks during the week of July 25. The six-party negotiations - which include China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States - last convened in June 2004. In Seoul, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said South Korea would provide electricity to the North if it agrees to give up nuclear weapons at the revived arms talks. South Korean officials had previously refused to give details of the aid proposal which Chung made directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il at a meeting last month. The offer apparently convinced the North to end its boycott of the nuclear negotiations. Chung said the South would provide electricity the North had been set to receive from proliferation-proof nuclear reactors that were to be built under a 1994 deal between Washington and North Korea. "Our proposal to directly supply energy is to provide the power to replace the North's nuclear energy, which is a key component of the nuclear issue,'' Chung told a news conference. That project has stalled and other energy aid also has been halted to the North since the latest nuclear crisis broke out in late 2002, after U.S. officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program. Enriched uranium can be used for nuclear energy but also for nuclear weapons. The new 2 million kilowatts of electricity could be delivered by 2008 after infrastructure is built, Chung said. The earlier $4.6 billion reactor project would be scrapped, he said. Chung said the North has not directly responded to the plan, which has also been presented to U.S. officials. "We are going to keep on consulting with the North sincerely about the practicality and usefulness'' of this proposal, he said. Chung also echoed Rice's calls for the arms talks to lead to a resolution of the nuclear crisis. South Korea also pledged Tuesday to give 500,000 tons of rice to North Korea in aid separate from the nuclear issue. That agreement - reached after all-night bilateral economic talks - would be Seoul's largest food shipment in five years to the North. Meanwhile, senior North Korean officials told a visiting columnist from The New York Times that one of two nuclear reactors the North resumed building this year - which could potentially generate more weapons-grade plutonium - could be completed this year or next. "To defend our sovereignty and our system ... we cannot but increase our number of nuclear weapons as a deterrent force,'' Nicholas D. Kristof quoted North Korean Gen. Li Chan Bok as saying. If the United States mounts a military strike to destroy the reactors, Li said it would be "all-out war'' and did not rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Kristof reported. At the close Tuesday of inter-Korean economic talks at which the rice aid was negotiated, the two sides agreed the South would give the North raw materials to help it produce clothes, shoes and soap for use by its impoverished population. In return, the South will be given investment rights in North Korean mining operations. The North and South also agreed to conduct a pilot run in October of reconnected railroad links across their heavily armed border and hold an opening ceremony for restored roads. The two Koreas also will open an economic cooperation office at a joint industrial zone just north of their border.
Associated Press reporter George Gedda contributed to this story from Tokyo.
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South Korea Offers To Supply Energy if North Gives Up Arms

By Glenn Kessler

SEOUL, July 12 -- South Korea has offered to supply the North with electric power equivalent to the output of two unfinished nuclear plants if the communist state gives up its nuclear weapons, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

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http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200...20581611960.htm

S Korea to Purchase US Spy Aircraft

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The Defense Ministry has officially requested the United States sell its high-altitude, long-range surveillance aircraft as part of its mid to long-term arms acquisition plan, ministry officials said Tuesday.


The request was made at a subpanel session of an annual defense ministerial meeting between South Korea and the U.S., called the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), in Hawaii last month, officials said. The two allies are scheduled to hold the SCM in October.


The South Korean delegates asked the U.S. to consider selling its Global Hawks, high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), during the sub-panel session, adding that the U.S. has yet to make any official response.


By an international pact, the U.S. is required to receive government and Congressional approval to sell Global Hawks to other countries, as the spy aircraft is a key U.S. strategic weapon. The U.S. government approved the sale of the Global Hawk to Japan last month.


Under its five-year arms buildup plan to enhance a Ў°selfreliantЎ± defense capability, the ministry plans to purchase four high-altitude UAVs by 2008, while producing four other medium- altitude UAVs by 2016 with the countryЎЇs own technology.


The Global Hawk can fly autonomously at an altitude of 20 kilometers (65,000 feet) above inclement weather and prevailing winds for more than 35 hours, with its computer guidance system.


During a single mission, it covers an area approximately half the size of the United States, providing detailed image-based intelligence of 40,000 square miles. The 13.5-meter-long air vehicle can move at a maximum speed of 635 kilometers per hour. It costs some $45 million per unit.


South Korea is still technically in a state of war with North Korea, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 32,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed on the Korean Peninsula.



gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

07-12-2005 21:00

News Analysis: Seoul relies on silence to sway North International Herald Tribune
SEOUL Kim Young Soon still remembers her first sight of North Korea's infamous prison camp No. 15 in Yodok. Just inside a barbed-wire fence and across a muddy field loomed a cluster of tall concrete cubicles, each barely wide enough to fit a refrigerator. Each had a window that could be covered by a pair of hands. "Those were solitary cells for mentally ill people," said Kim, 68. "In North Korea, they even held mentally ill people in a political prisoner camp for saying things against the government." "I crossed the gate of death," Kim said about the day her family of seven arrived at Yodok. After eight years, only four survived. "The conditions there were so gruesome that even a beast would blush." Accounts like this have become an old story in South Korea, as more survivors of North Korean gulags arrive here. What's remarkable - and catastrophic, human rights activists say - is that they seldom stir an uproar in the capitalist South, where the hottest rights issue these days is whether schools should allow pupils to grow their hair as they like. The silence reflects not only a South Korean society growing detached emotionally from the North after half a century of division, but also a government policy summarized as "silent and substantial." "The question is whether we take a 'loud and symbolic' approach or a 'silent and substantial' track," said Ko Kyung Bin, a senior official at the Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea. "If we get loud about human rights, North Korea authorities will make the country more isolated and the human rights situation there will get worse." It is an approach that drives the government of President Roh Moo Hyun to provide the North with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in aid, to bring thousands of North Korean refugees to resettle in the South and yet to abstain from voting on the UN Human Rights Commission's annual resolution condemning North Korea. It is also an approach that was shaken last month when President George W. Bush made the conspicuous and symbolic gesture of extending a White House invitation to the former Yodok inmate Kang Chol Hwan. Kang wrote a book about his time as a child inmate there and has been a vocal critic of the North's human rights record. The South Korean policy also puts Seoul at odds with Japan, which is determined to bring up the issue of kidnapped Japanese citizens during six-nation talks later this month in Beijing. South Korea fears such action would complicate the main focus: the North's nuclear weapons threat. "The South Korean government has been guilty of neglecting its duty," said Kim Hyun Wook, a leader at the Catholic Lay Apostolate Council of Korea. "We have been silent too long - we have forgotten about it too long." The comments reflect a growing movement among U.S. and South Korean church groups to speak out about human rights in the North. The North Korean regime runs a network of secret police that infiltrate every corner of its society to ferret out potential dangers to its totalitarian grip on power, human rights groups say. But the North takes any international discussion of its human rights record as an attempt to topple its rulers and responds by escalating nuclear saber-rattling. Last week, Roh, who was a human rights lawyer before becoming the South's president, appealed to the outside world to be patient with the North Korean regime so it will develop trust and be confident enough to discuss its human rights issues openly. Direct pressure would make the country more hostile and isolationist, he said. "I think this is an inevitable approach," Roh said. Since 1998, the two Koreas have made unprecedented strides in easing tensions and improving relations, including temporary reunions of thousands of families separated by the Korean War a half-century ago. But critics say the North has used these exchanges to win aid while making no commitment to resolve its nuclear threat and human rights abuses. Former dissidents and human rights champions, who form the core of the Roh administration, "have done almost everything within their power to avert their gaze from a human rights disaster second to none in the contemporary world," Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea expert at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, said in a speech in May.
Eberstadt said Roh's policy is preventing his government from working harder to save tens of thousands of North Korean escapees who are hiding in China, where North Korean women "'can be sold, like cats; and the men are regularly hunted down and rounded up, almost like dogs," for deportation to the North's labor camps. Torture, forced abortions and extra-judicial executions are common in these camps, according to the 2005 White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, which was released this week by the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. It describes how inmates are stripped of basic civil rights and medical service and exposed to 15 hours of forced labor a day. Hundreds die in each camp every year. The document, based largely on testimonies from North Korean defectors, said it was unclear how many gulags exist in the North because the authorities often merge and relocate them to prevent inmates from escaping or to avoid international monitoring. But it said the estimated number of detainees has doubled to 200,000 in the past 20 years, as the regime tightened societal controls following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Kim Young Soon, a former television actress, led a comfortable life in Pyongyang working as a clerk at a high-end gift shop until her husband, an encyclopedia editor, disappeared in 1970. The secret police soon came and took her family to Yodok, a constellation of huts and barracks spreading down valleys about 110 kilometers, roughly 70 miles, northeast of Pyongyang. "There were no letters going out and no visitors coming in," said Kim, who toiled in Yodok until 1978 and then spent three more years working in a gold mine. "I always had to run because if I was late or didn't finish my work quota, my food ration was reduced." "I worked liked an animal, never combed my hair," she said. "I never had a menstruation for four years. Every day, I was tired of living." At Yodok, there were former diplomats, generals, film directors and the families of people who had defected to South Korea, Kim said. Their crimes ranged from listening to the South Korean radio to accidentally breaking a plaster bust of Kim Il Sung, the founding president and father of the current leader, Kim Jong Il, or sitting on a newspaper that contained the senior Kim's picture. Kim Young Soon, who was never tried at court, was deemed guilty of "leaking information detrimental to the state." Her crime: talking to other people about Sung Hae Rim, the actress who was a friend of hers and who later became an unofficial wife of Kim Jong Il. Kim Young Soon lost both her parents and a son at Yodok. Another son, then 23, was executed by firing squad for trying to escape to China in 1988. Kim and her only remaining son escaped to China and then reached South Korea in 2003.
US Moving Closer to Allies on N. Korea Los Angeles Times
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US HoldsKey to NK Nukes: Roh Korea Times
President Roh Moo-hyun said Monday it is the United States that holds the key to ending the diplomatic impasse surrounding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. While meeting with former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at Chong Wa Dae, he placed much emphasis on the U.S. attitude in the new round of six-party talks, set to start next week. Powell, who has just acquired a venture business job in Silicon Valley after serving for the first-term George W. Bush administration, came here Saturday at the invitation of a South Korean business group. Powell highly evaluated the Roh administration’s efforts to break the deadlock in the six-party process, which has been in dormancy for about a year, citing Seoul’s latest offer to transmit electricity directly to North Korea in return for nuclear dismantlement. Roh praised Powell for having laid the groundwork for the six-party process that was launched in 2003 and also expressed gratitude for his "timely’’ visit. "I’m very pleased to see you here at this significant time when we have good news for a new round of talks,’’ Roh said. "However,’’ he stressed, "It is the United States that holds the key.’’ As an advocate of diplomacy within the hawkish circle in the Bush administration, Powell has been deeply involved in the process of launching the six-way talks in August 2003 to address the nuclear standoff that occurred in the previous year. North Korea and the U.S., along with South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, have held three rounds of negotiations within the framework of the China-sponsored forum, but little progress has been made. North Korea agreed to hold another round after a yearlong boycott. Officials said the fourth round of talks will likely begin in Beijing on July 26. South Korea, which has offered electricity aid, wants the length of the multilateral talks to be extended to more than a couple of weeks. Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, who will lead the South Korean delegation, has said Seoul and other parties have long prepared for the negotiations so the participating nations could see "substantial progress’’ this time. But, a Japanese daily reported that the U.S. has told its Asian allies _ South Korea and Japan _ that it would quit the six-party negotiations and turn to punitive measures to pressure the North if the new round of talks fails to produce any tangible achievements. North Korea renewed its commitment yesterday to make progress in next week’s parley, but at the same time warned of serious consequences if the U.S. keeps trying to disarm and topple the communist country. In the meantime, South Korea called for a "more sincere attitude’’ from Japan, asking it not to focus on its own abductees issue in the multilateral talks, which are mainly aimed at ending the nuclear dispute. Japan has largely sided with the U.S. hardliners in the six-nation talks. "The prime goal of the six-party talks is to solve North Korea’s nuclear problem,’’ a high-level government official said on condition of anonymity. "Other problems could be dealt with in the bilateral contacts within the framework of the six-party talks or other dialogue channels.’’
jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr
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N.Korea seeks US trust at nuclear talks Reuters AlertNet
North Korea said it wants to build trust and respect with the its greatest foe, the United States, at six-country talks next week aimed at ending Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons, its media reported on Monday. North Korea also hinted at having the Beijing negotiations examine Washington's deployment of its nuclear arsenal. Analysts said this echoed a demand Pyongyang made in March to turn the talks into a broad nuclear disarmament discussion, which could scuttle the entire process if Pyongyang presses the point in Beijing because patience among key players is wearing thin. The negotiations, which the reclusive North has boycotted for over a year, will begin on July 26 in Beijing but no date has been set for the discussions to end, a South Korean daily said. North Korea said earlier this month it would return to the talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States in the week of July 25, but it gave no exact date. "What is most essential for making progress in the six-party talks ... is for the DPRK and the U.S. to build the relationship of trust and a will for mutual respect and co-existence," the North's Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency. DPRK is short for the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. South Korea has proposed providing the North with electricity supplies roughly equal to its own output if Pyongyang abandons its nuclear ambitions. But Seoul feels Washington will be the force behind any negotiated deal. "It's the United States that holds the final key," South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said in a meeting in Seoul with former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell.

NO TALKS FOR TALKS' SAKE
Rodong Sinmun said North Korea felt "the talks should not be ones for their own sake" and hinted that Pyongyang might want to stand on a par with Washington as a nuclear weapons power. "The U.S. should bear in mind that any attempt to pressurise the DPRK to unilaterally scrap its nuclear programme would never help denuclearise the Korean peninsula but only cause the nuclear crisis to fester," it said. North Korea has previously said it wants Washington to remove its nuclear arms from the divided peninsula. Washington maintains it has no nuclear weapons deployed there. "This would be a non-starter," Ralph Cossa, president of the Asian affairs think-tank Pacific Forum CSIS, said in an interview last week about the North trying to find support for disarmament discussions at the six-party talks. The regional powers trying to coax North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons have said they expect progress at this fourth round of talks, and analysts expect little tolerance of any North Korean tactics that the powers see as diversionary. The parties want specific results this time and so have yet to decide on a closing date, the South Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo quoted an unnamed government source as saying. The Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported separately that the United States had told Japan and South Korea it wanted to scrap the talks if there was no breakthrough in Beijing. Last week, top negotiators from Japan, South Korea and the United States met in Seoul and said they would like to see next week's talks extended beyond the three or four days of previous rounds. They also wanted to change the format to ensure more time for hard bargaining and less for reading out position papers. (Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo)
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North Korea has told the United States it is ready for visits from President George W. Bush or Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a step toward normalizing relations, a news report said Saturday. North Korea relayed the message during a meeting of diplomats from the two countries held in New York in late June and early July, Kyodo News agency reported from Beijing citing diplomatic sources it didn't identify. Those meetings were attended by Joseph DeTrani, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean negotiations, and Ri Gun, chief of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's U.S. Affairs Department. U.S. representatives said North Korea should also send senior officials to the United States, but the discussions ended without any commitments after North Korean officials expressed doubt about. Washington's intentions to issue visas for a visiting delegation, Kyodo said North Korea and the United States are preparing for a new round of six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the communist country's nuclear weapons program. The negotiations, which also include delegates from South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, are set to begin in Beijing on Tuesday after a 13-month hiatus. North Korea has made improved relations with the United States a requirement for abandoning its nuclear program. Leaders of the two countries have never met, and their governments don't have embassies in each other's capitals. A separate news report said Saturday that the United States, Japan and South Korea will jointly offer the North security guarantees, normalized relations and energy aid at the Beijing disarmament talks, if the communist nation agrees to give up its nuclear weapons. If North Korea also addresses concerns about its missile development and human rights, Japan and the United States will take further steps toward normalizing diplomatic relations, Japan's Nihon Keizai newspaper said. Japan also has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, but Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has twice journeyed to Pyongyang for summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il since 2002. (AP)
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Two Koreas call for substantial progress at talks Reuters
Delegations from North and South Korea, meeting in Beijing on Sunday, said they wanted to see "substantial progress" in this week's six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The two sides said they also wanted the participants to come up with a framework for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, Seoul's envoy to the talks, met his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, in Beijing ahead of the talks, South Korean media reported. "We shared the view that participants in the talks should produce substantial progress and come up with a framework for the realisation of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula," he told reporters in Beijing. Christopher Hill, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said on his arrival in Beijing that he would like to see enough progress this week to keep the talking going into a future round. "I wouldn't expect this to be the last set of negotiations ... we would like to make some measurable progress, progress we can build on for a subsequent round of negotiations," he said. "These are obviously very important negotiations that we are very much committed to."

AID AND SECURITY
No end date has been set for this fourth round of talks, which involve the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China. The six parties will try to hammer out a deal under which North Korea would be offered security guarantees and economic aid in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons programs. South Korea says it is willing to supply the North with 2,000 megawatts of electricity -- doubling its impoverished neighbor's current output -- if Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear programs. But patience for a negotiated deal is wearing thin among key players, notably the United States, which may turn this session into a make-or-break meeting. Song earlier said he expected an arduous process in Beijing. "We might have rapid progress, but I think it's more accurate to say it's going to be a long process," he said. Proliferation experts believe North Korea has pushed ahead with its nuclear programs over the past several years, likely boosting its arsenal from one or two nuclear weapons to as many as nine -- with suspicions growing the North wants to build more. The challenge for the parties is to keep negotiations focused and avoid diversions that could derail them, analysts said. South Korea says the overriding concern at the new round of talks would be ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, and it is seeking to dissuade its partners from widening the discussions.

JAPANESE ABDUCTIONS
Japan has said it wants to raise the issue of its citizens abducted by the North decades ago. U.S. officials have spoken of touching on North Korea's human rights record. Another stumbling block is the U.S. charge that Pyongyang has been running a secret program to enrich uranium into weapons-grade material. North Korea has admitted to a plutonium program but denied running a uranium enrichment program. North Korea has also muddied the waters in recent days by saying the talks would proceed on a more firm footing if they addressed Pyongyang establishing diplomatic relations with Washington and reaching a peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. A North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman said a treaty would "automatically result in the denuclearisation of the peninsula." There have been three rounds of the talks -- all hosted by China -- since August 2003. At the third round, in June 2004, the United States proposed fuel aid and security guarantees for North Korea if it scrapped its nuclear programs. But a year of delay and much soul-searching by the parties have also given rise to some hope that progress, if not a quick resolution of the problem, may be within reach. North Korea in recent weeks reaffirmed its commitment to ultimately abandon its nuclear weapons and to resolve the standoff through the six-party process. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator for the talks has said North Korea must make a strategic decision to get rid of nuclear programs. "We're going to really push these negotiations until we make some progress," Hill said in Seoul last week after a strategy session with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.
North, South Koreans Form a `Consensus' Ahead of Nuclear Talks Bloomberg
New push for North Korea progress BBC News
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Bomber Kills 20 at Baghdad Police Station San Francisco Chronicle
A suicide attacker slammed a truck loaded with explosives into concrete barriers outside a Baghdad police station Sunday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 30, police said. The attacker detonated his charge at the Rashad police station in the eastern neighborhood of Mashtal around 2:50 p.m., said Capt. Mahir Abdul Satar. Six cars, including two police cars, were seen burning and several nearby shops were damaged, police officials said. The blast left a giant, blackened crater at the scene. Body parts lay scattered around the area as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze and rescue workers carried away victims on stretchers. Insurgents have regularly targeted Iraq's police and security forces in attempts to further destabilize the country, which has been struggling to put together a new constitution and broad-based government. Members of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's bloc threatened Sunday to walk out of the constitutional drafting committee in support of a Sunni group that boycotted the process. Committee member Adnan al-Janabi, who also is part of secular leader Allawi's eight-member bloc, criticized the way the commission dealt with Sunni members' decision to suspend their participation in drafting the new charter. "Their demands and suspension of membership should have been studied and taken in a way that reassures them and brings them to participate in the draft constitution that we want to be agreed upon by all Iraqis," he said. Al-Janabi, who also is a spokesman for Allawi's group, said the bloc's continued participation remains in question. "Our continuation in the committee drafting the constitution has become dependent on getting clarifications to what we have asked earlier," al-Janabi said. The mixed makeup of the committee was deemed crucial for drafting a constitution acceptable to all of Iraq's ethnic and religious communities, a key to any political exit from the unremitting violence and the need for American troops to remain in Iraq. If Allawi's secular group joins the Sunnis in pulling out of the process, it raises the concern that a committee already dominated by Shiite religious parties and ethnic Kurds would be left in control of drafting the charter. Al-Janabi also expressed anger over commission chairman Sheik Humam Hammoudi's announcement that a draft would be ready within days, saying it was "a draft that we were not consulted about and I don't know how it was written or who wrote it." On Thursday, the 12 remaining Sunni members of the commission suspended their participation to protest the assassination of Sunni member Mijbil Issa and adviser Dhamim Hussein al-Obeidi by unknown gunmen. Two of the original 15 Sunni members resigned earlier after insurgents threatened them. The Sunni members demanded an international investigation into the killings, better security and a greater Sunni role in deliberations. On Sunday, no Sunni members showed up at a planned constitutional meeting even though the group indicated a day earlier it was considering a possible return. Shiite member Bahaa al-Araji said no decision will be taken "without the presence of the brothers (Sunnis) unless there is a reason for the absence. Therefore, the committee will be committed to handing over the draft at the time agreed upon." The threatened walkout by Allawi's group is the latest hurdle in the commission's goal of getting a constitution drafted and approved by the assembly Aug. 15. That charter then would be scheduled for a public referendum two months later. Voters in only three of Iraq's 18 provinces can scuttle the constitution if they reject it by two-thirds majority in the October referendum. Meanwhile, scattered attacks around the capital Sunday left three dead, including two police officers, while a police lieutenant colonel was killed in northern Iraq, police and hospital officials said. Also, a Baghdad city employee was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting as he headed to work Sunday and a former member of a local city council was gunned down Saturday night in front of his home in a town north of the capital, officials said.
Child and 6 other Iraqi civilians killed in blast CNN International
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FACTBOX-Issues at six-country talks on nuclear-free N.Korea Reuters
East Asian regional powers resume long-delayed six-country talks on Tuesday aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear programmes. Substantive progress was scarce in the previous three rounds over nearly two years, while disagreements, fresh demands and pitfalls bred complications. Following are key points surrounding the six-country talks.

GIVE AND TAKE
The basic premise of the talks is for North Korea to dismantle all nuclear weapons programmes in a verifiable and irreversible manner in exchange for much-needed aid for its moribund economy and security guarantees.

THE ROUNDS
China hosted three rounds of talks beginning in August 2003 with North and South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia. It was not until the third round in June 2004 that substantive proposals were made. No discussions on the proposals have followed so far.

WHAT NORTH KOREA WANTS
The North has sought energy aid, its removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and the lifting of all sanctions against it. It has said it wants to see those moves in return for a freeze of its nuclear programmes, before it begins dismantling them. Since March this year, the North has demanded the six-party process be turned into disarmament talks that would also discuss U.S. nuclear weapons it says are deployed in South Korea. Washington denies the existence of such weapons. Pyongyang has also repeated calls for a peace treaty with the United States.

U.S. DEMANDS
Washington wants to see the North begin dismantling all nuclear programmes, including one based on uranium enrichment technology, within three months of freezing them. It has not offered to be directly part of an energy aid package.

SWEETENER
Seoul said earlier this month it would supply the North with 2,000 megawatts of electricity, roughly equivalent to present total power output in the impoverished communist state, if Pyongyang dismantled its nuclear programmes.

STUMBLING BLOCKS
Tokyo says the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Koreans decades ago should be raised at the Beijing talks. Washington sees the need to include North Korea's record of human rights abuse on the table. Seoul has tried to keep this coming talks session focused on the North's nuclear arms.

ANOTHER BREAKDOWN?
All the parties, including North Korea, say they are prepared to work for substantive progress. Another breakdown could mean the end of the six-party process and renewed U.S. calls to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
US, N.Korea nuclear envoys to meet on eve of talks Reuters.uk
Modest Goals Set for N. Korea Nuclear Talks Washington Post
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N. Korea Talks May Be a Last Chance
--------------------

After little progress so far and a long delay in resuming six-party nuclear discussions, the stakes are high for this week's negotiations.

By Ching-Ching Ni
Times Staff Writer

July 25 2005

BEIJING; When the United States, North Korea and four other nations return to the negotiating table Tuesday to resume long-stalled talks on ending the Pyongyang government's nuclear weapons program, it might well be their last chance for a breakthrough.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...,1,664925.story

N. Korea Pledges to Work Toward Denuclearization Los Angeles Times
As the six-nation talks open today in Beijing, an American official reiterates that the US has no plans to attack the isolated country.
N.Korea crisis talks resume with hope for progress Reuters
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N Korea crisis talks back on after a year New Zealand Herald
Six-party talks aimed at ending the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions resumed today after a year's hiatus. As the negotiations began, host China appealed for flexibility and US reassurances of Pyongyang's sovereignty. While few expect a breakthrough, the atmosphere in the run-up to the fourth round of talks between the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China has been upbeat. The United States held a rare one-on-one meeting with North Korea lasting over an hour on Monday, raising hopes of a less confrontational approach to discussions which have dragged on for nearly three years. "I hope relevant sides ... can take a flexible and pragmatic attitude in the talks, respect each other, engage in dialogue on an equal basis and have full consultations," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said as the talks opened. Three previous rounds ended without progress and Japanese top negotiator Kenichiro Sasae warned that failure to gain concrete results this time would call the credibility of the talks into question. Stalemate in Beijing might prompt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations and prompt debate on possible sanctions, which China opposes and North Korea has warned would trigger conflict. But the early meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, and faint progress at weekend talks between the two Koreas, offered a buoyant atmosphere. The upbeat mood extended into Tuesday's opening statements. Hill said the United States viewed North Korea as a sovereign nation and had no intention of attacking it. Opening talks is important. But what's more important is to achieve actual progress such as denuclearisation," the North's Kim said at the opening. "Our delegation is fully ready for this and we believe other parties including the United States are also ready for it." Delegates said there was a consensus not to set an end-date to the session, and a US official said they would try to reach some consensus on "agreed points" for future discussion. North Korea, an erratic and reclusive Communist state which remains technically at war with Washington, has spent decades trying to gain its attention and respect, often through brinkmanship. The crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials accused North Korea -- which US President George Bush had branded part of an axis of evil alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq -- of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. The North quickly expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Early this year Pyongyang announced it possessed nuclear weapons, regularly demanded Washington drop its "hostile policy" and called for economic aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them.
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Fourth Time's the Charm?
Proliferation Brief, Volume 8, Number 7
July 26, 2005

After 13 months of posturing, the six-party talks to denuclearize the Korean peninsula will finally resume July 26 in Beijing. But the mere resumption of these negotiations between the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia is not enough. If the North Korean nuclear challenge is to be resolved without confrontation, significant progress must be made this week.

To offer perspective on the current crisis, here is a brief history of U.S.-North Korean nuclear negotiations, excerpted from the recently published second edition of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats. Deadly Arsenals is co-authored by Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar.

North Korea’s unchecked nuclear weapons capabilities represent a serious threat to regional security; to several key U.S. allies, including South Korea and Japan; and to the global effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Other nations possess a limited set of tools to influence North Korean behavior and convince its enigmatic leadership to abandon its unconventional weapons production and export activities. Past efforts that have alternated between enticing and pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear program have been unsuccessful.
George H.W. Bush Administration

During the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the United States began a strategy of engagement with Pyongyang, with the goal of ending their nuclear weapons activities and encouraging improved relations between North and South Korea.

This process included a high-level meeting in 1991 between then–undersecretary of state Arnold Kantor and North Korean representative Kim Yong Sun that convinced North Korea to complete the process of adhering to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992.

Bill Clinton Administration

Engagement continued and expanded under the Clinton administration, which featured several periods of crisis, including one that almost led to war. That crisis eventually resulted in the completion of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze North Korea’s nuclear material production for eight years. The final months of the Clinton administration also saw an intense negotiating effort to end North Korea’s ballistic missile program. Then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in 2000 and became the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to meet with Kim Jong Il. But the details of a missile elimination agreement could not be concluded by the time George W. Bush was inaugurated in January 2001.

George W. Bush Administration

Upon assuming office, the Bush administration undertook a wholesale reassessment of U.S. policy toward North Korea. Many incoming officials had actively opposed the 1994 Agreed Framework and were highly skeptical of the North’s commitment to give up its nuclear weapons program. On June 6, 2001, the White House issued a presidential statement announcing that the United States should "undertake serious discussions with North Korea on a broad agenda to include: improved implementation of the Agreed Framework relating to North Korea’s nuclear activities; verifiable constraints on North Korea’s missile programs and a ban on its missile exports; and a less threatening conventional military posture."

Despite this stated desire to pursue discussions, the U.S.–North Korean relationship was steadily deteriorating. Attempts by South Korean president Kim Dae Jung to win President Bush’s endorsement for his engagement or "sunshine" policy toward the North was bluntly rejected during a Washington summit in March 2001. Less than a year later, President Bush included North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address.

The situation remained tense throughout 2002. That summer, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that North Korea had been secretly trying to acquire a uranium enrichment program for at least two years. In October, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, James Kelly, traveled to Pyongyang for long-postponed discussions with his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan. During the talks, Kelly confronted Kim over the North’s uranium enrichment effort and informed him that any improvement in U.S.-North Korea relations would be conditioned on the immediate and verified elimination of the enrichment program. During the two days of meetings, North Korean officials consistently denied the enrichment allegation, until Kang Sok Ju, the vice foreign minister, joined the talks and, according to all U.S. participants, admitted that the enrichment effort did exist. Since then, North Korean officials have consistently denied the admission, claiming that their words were translated incorrectly. U.S. officials maintain that Kim not only admitted to the program’s existence but also claimed that North Korea had the right to possess nuclear weapons because of the hostile policies of the Bush administration. Vice Minister Kang reportedly had no response when confronted with the allegation that the enrichment program predated the election of George W. Bush.

In December 2002, after having been confronted by the United States over its alleged uranium enrichment program, North Korea expelled IAEA inspectors from the country and removed all IAEA monitoring equipment and seals from its nuclear facilities, including the seals on the 8,000 fuel rods stored at Yongbyon. In addition, on January 10, 2003, North Korea announced that it was immediately withdrawing from the NPT. Two years later, on February 10, 2005, Pyongyang announced that it had "manufactured" nuclear weapons as a deterrent to U.S. hostility. The 5-megawatt-electric (MWe) reactor at Yongbyon was restarted in late 2002 and operated for more than two years. The reactor was shut down in April 2005 and could provide North Korea another 12 to 19 kilograms of plutonium.

Objectives of Six-Party Talks

Since October 2002, the United States has sought to convince North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons capabilities under effective verification. This process has centered on the six-party talks, which convened in August 2003 and February and June 2004 in Beijing. The talks include representatives from the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. China was instrumental in creating the talks, and it has been influential (according to both Chinese and American officials) in persuading North Korea to participate in them.

The first two rounds of the six-party talks produced little agreement. The United States sought to use the talks largely as a vehicle to bring coordinated, international pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear activities and has refused to provide anything that could be deemed as a reward for Pyongyang’s participation in the talks or any interim moves on the North’s nuclear program. The United States has also rejected calls to engage in any formal bilateral negotiations with North Korea, something Pyongyang has long sought and that might also be interpreted as a reward for its past behavior. North Korea, for its part, has tried to use the talks as a way of extracting concessions from the United States and other countries and has also tried to leverage the talks by demanding rewards simply for participating in them.

The U.S. posture at the talks changed significantly at their third round in June 2004. At the urging of South Korean and Japanese officials, the United States offered a detailed proposal for ending North Korea’s nuclear program. The proposal called for a new declaration to be made by North Korea, to include all plutonium production and uranium enrichment capabilities, nuclear materials, weapons and related equipment, and for the elimination of all of these to begin after a three-month preparatory period.

In exchange for agreeing to this proposed approach, non-U.S. parties would provide North Korea with heavy fuel oil, and once the declaration was given by the North and deemed credible, the other parties would provide North Korea with multilateral security assurances, which would become more enduring as the process proceeded; begin a study on North Korea’s energy requirements to see how to best meet them with non-nuclear energy programs; and begin a discussion of lifting all remaining U.S. sanctions against the North. In describing the talks before Congress, Assistant Secretary Kelly stressed that as North Korea undertook its obligation, the moves by the other parties would be temporary and "would only yield lasting benefits to [North Korea] after the dismantlement of its nuclear program had been completed."

North Korea has not formally responded to this offer. Washington insists that it must be the starting point for any future negotiations.

proliferationnews@carnegieendowment.org.

New Talks on North Korea Open With Fresh Strategy
(Edward Cody, Washington Post Foreign Service)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5072501582.html

Tuesday, July 26
Breaking a 13-month deadlock, diplomats from six nations opened a new round of negotiations Tuesday designed to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

Delegation chiefs from the United States and North Korea laid out their positions using what seemed to be particularly conciliatory language during a round of preliminary speeches, with each seeking to appear receptive to the other's key demands. Despite these gestures, diplomats cautioned that long, difficult negotiations lie ahead.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, who leads his country's negotiating team, reiterated his government's declared willingness to work for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula -- the Bush administration's main goal and the overall purpose of the six-party process that has been underway under China's aegis since August 2003.

N. Korea Has Little to Lose in Nuclear Talks, Analysts Say
(Barbara Slavin, USA Today)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07...e-to-lose_x.htm

Sunday, July 24
North Korea returns Tuesday to talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program. But it has powerful historical reasons to reject a deal and little to fear if it does, in the view of several experts. The Bush administration has promised a written pledge not to invade North Korea if it gives up its nuclear program, and South Korea has offered energy aid. But President Bush has opposed opening an embassy in Pyongyang unless North Korea starts treating its people better.

The chances North Korea will give up its program are at best 50-50, said Joseph Cirincione, director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. Regime change, Cirincione said, is what has caused most nations to drop their nuclear weapons programs. Among them: Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine did so after gaining independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. One exception is Libya, whose long-running ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, agreed to end his nuclear program in 2003; the United States did not insist Libya improve its human rights record before restoring relations.

North Korea risks little by not giving up its nuclear weapons, said Balbina Hwang, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. Economic sanctions won't work without cooperation from China, Russia and South Korea, she said. "South Korea has refused to do that, and the South Koreans and Chinese are in a furious battle for control of the North Korean economy."

North Korea Nuclear Goals: Case of Mixed Signals
(Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger, New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/politics...artner=homepage

Monday, July 25
Early this year, American spy satellites detected a spike in suspicious tunneling activity at a highly secretive military site in the mountains of North Korea. It alarmed some of the government's top nuclear analysts, who saw it as a sign that North Korea might be preparing to make good on threats to conduct its first test of a nuclear weapon.

The prospect of an imminent test became a crucial point in briefings by the Bush administration to its Asian allies and China, arguing that the North Korean threat was growing rapidly and that they needed to increase pressure to resume six-nation talks aimed at disarmament. After weeks of diplomatic maneuvering, North Korea agreed to resume the talks, which are to begin Tuesday.

But behind that urgent view of North Korea's activities lies a much more complicated, and at times contradictory, picture. It shows some of the same strains over the use of intelligence that came to divide federal agencies and policy makers before the Iraq invasion.

South Korean Envoy Offers Resignation Los Angeles Times
The ambassador to the US is accused of involvement in an alleged political slush fund involving Samsung Group in the 1990s. By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer.
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Mood upbeat on day two of N.Korea crisis talks Reuters
The six countries trying to settle the North Korean nuclear crisis set out their positions on Wednesday, the second day of talks marked so far by unusually frequent direct contacts between North Korean and U.S. envoys. The mood surrounding the long-delayed fourth round of talks in Beijing between the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China has been upbeat, but few expect a breakthrough. Delegates held a plenary session of almost three hours on Wednesday at which they clarified their positions on Pyongyang's acquisition of nuclear weapons. The parties were holding a series of bilateral meetings in the afternoon. China's Wu Dawei said after the morning session that all six negotiators had stated their stances and offered opinions on how to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula, Xinhua news agency said. Wu, who is a vice foreign minister, said his fellow delegation chiefs had underlined their commitment to dialogue and to a peaceful resolution of the issue. Japanese chief negotiator Kenichiro Sasae told the session: "North Korea must make a strategic and substantive decision to commit itself to abandoning its nuclear programs with the aim of denuclearising the Korean peninsula." "We strongly hope that North Korea will accept demands for the complete dismantlement of all nuclear programs including a uranium enrichment program in an internationally reliable and verifiable manner," the Japanese embassy quoted him as saying. There was no immediate word of North Korea's response, and no sign that it was any closer to taking such a pivotal decision. In one-on-one talks with the United States on Tuesday, Pyongyang had denied having a uranium enrichment program for peaceful purposes, let alone for making bombs, Kyodo news agency reported, citing unnamed sources. The North acknowledges having a program for enriching plutonium, which can be used for manufacturing weapons. U.S. and North Korean delegates have been having unprecedented contacts here, holding bilateral meetings on both Monday and Tuesday. The two sides seemed to be taking a less confrontational approach this time than during previous six-party forums spread over almost three years. At Tuesday's opening plenary session, U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill offered reassurances to the North, which it had labeled just months ago as an "outpost of tyranny," that Washington considered it a sovereign state which need not fear American attack.

"MAJOR DISAGREEMENTS"
Despite the upbeat signals, distrust is still great and the stakes are high. A North Korean source told Russia's Interfax news agency on Tuesday that major disagreements remained. The United States stood by its position that improved ties, security guarantees and energy aid could only come after North Korea scrapped its nuclear weapons programs, the source said. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington on Tuesday there was a "seriousness of purpose" at the talks, and the United States hoped there would be progress enough to merit agreement on another round of talks. Xinhua quoted chief Russian delegate Alexander Alexeyev as saying that preliminary points to build on could emerge following the Wednesday plenary session. Three previous rounds saw no progress and Japan has warned that failure to gain concrete results this time would call the credibility of the talks into question. Stalemate might prompt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations and open debate on possible sanctions, which China opposes and North Korea has warned would trigger conflict. If the talks go well, the rewards could help the impoverished North out of diplomatic isolation and offer aid at a time when the World Food Programme is warning of a worsening food crisis. South Korea said its offer to supply Pyongyang with 2,000 megawatts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the North's total power output, if it scrapped its nuclear plans, could be key to resolving the crisis. The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused Pyongyang of pursuing a clandestine weapons program. The North quickly expelled nuclear inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Early this year Pyongyang announced that it had built nuclear weapons and was building more. It demanded Washington provide aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them, a sequence that remains at odds with the U.S. position.
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http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...26-121952-3272r

analysis: No breakthroughs expected in N. Korea nuke talks

Bush policy backfiring in Asia Boston Globe
NOW THAT North Korea has returned to six-party talks, the question remains, will the Bush administration continue to watch Pyongyang arm without trying to do what South Korea and Japan think just might get it to stop: sustained diplomatic give and take? Most hard-liners in the administration are unilateralists who could care less what allies think. Negotiating is anathema to them. Others take it on faith that North Korea is determined to arm, not deal, and believe that a nuclear-arming Pyongyang will drive Seoul and Tokyo further into Washington's arms. The administration insists that six-party talks are further isolating North Korea and that pressure by China and others will bring it to heel. With a negotiated resolution viewed as desirable and possible in South Korea and Japan, however, administration misplaying of North Korea is threatening to unravel US alliances in Northeast Asia and enhance China's influence in the region. South Korea's refusal to ratchet up pressure on the North is dismissed by some Bush administration officials as the handiwork of left-leaning former dissidents in the Roh Moo Hyun government and by others as just a passing political phase in Seoul. They disregard growing misgivings of most South Koreans that Washington's uncompromising stance is impeding North-South reconciliation. Administration high-handedness with Seoul could not have come at a less opportune time. After a century of being more acted upon than actor on the world stage, South Korea has arisen from the ashes of war to become the world's 11th-largest economy. Less than two decades after throwing off the shackles of dictatorship, it is a thriving democracy with a politically attentive populace. National self-confidence and assertiveness are on the rise as a new generation of Koreans who did not suffer through deprivation, occupation, war, and dictatorship are rejecting their elders' deference to and dependency on outsiders. Administration officials profess to be heartened by Japan's willingness to toughen its stance toward North Korea and take other steps to strengthen its alliance with the United States. Convinced that pro-American officials are in the ascendancy in Tokyo, they talk about turning Japan into ''the Britain of the Far East." They mistake Japan's display of loyalty for fealty. Japanese policy circles roughly fall into five schools of thought. The Americanists want to bind Japan more tightly to the United States, partly to hedge against the rise of China. They are a force in the Foreign Ministry and dominate Japan's Defense Agency, which can be counted on to support almost anything the Pentagon wants. They have allies of sorts among internationalists who want Japan to be freer to engage more actively in collective security under a UN mandate. Among the Americanists' rivals are Asia-firsters who view Japan's future as tied to Asia economically and politically and favor development of multilateral institutions to bind a rising China into a web of cooperation. To Asia-firsters, Japan has a triangular relationship with the United States and China. While not rejecting close ties with Washington, they want better relations with Beijing as well, and they worry that US aggressiveness on North Korea or Taiwan could entrap Japan in an unwanted confrontation with China. A fourth group, Japan's Gaullists, distrust US reliability and judgment and exploit US demands to enhance Japan's capacity for independent political and military action. To their right is a fifth school, neonationalists like Tokyo's governor, Ishihara Shintaro, who want Japan to look after its own security, unbound by the alliance with the United States. An Americanist, Prime Minister Koizumi has publicly embraced President Bush, committing yen and troops to an unpopular war in Iraq, suppressing technical and political doubts to cooperate on missile defense, and tightening the integration of Japanese and US armed forces. Yet, to judge from his two summit meetings in three years with North Korea's Kim Jong Il, his display of loyalty had a purpose: to deflect Washington from confrontation with Pyongyang and Beijing that could cause a fatal breach in his party and his government. If Koizumi's balancing act fails, the ultimate beneficiaries of US policy toward North Korea may not be those who would bind Japan more tightly to the United States but Asia-firsters, Gaullists, and nationalists who want to loosen those ties. US hard-liners would rather pick a fight with China than negotiate with North Korea. They demand that Beijing pressure Pyongyang to capitulate to Washington's demands. Yet why would China ever cut off food and oil supplies and jeopardize the North Korean regime's survival? After all, China has been the chief beneficiary of the administration's refusal to deal. In the 1990s Beijing watched warily on the sidelines as Pyongyang wooed Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo. It feared that Pyongyang was moving to legitimate the US military presence in Korea or, worse, become a US ally. That was all but inconceivable to Washington, which looked to Beijing for help with Pyongyang. While Beijing's willingness to pressure Pyongyang became a litmus test for hard-liners spoiling for confrontation with China, the need for Beijing's help with Pyongyang was the main justification for officials favoring accommodation with China. Either way, the United States has put China back into the game with North Korea, as quarterback no less, in a position to enhance its influence in the region by playing well with others -- not to pressure Pyongyang, but to get Washington to deal. Far from isolating North Korea, the United States is itself becoming odd man out in the region. If this misguided course had a name, it would be hawk disengagement.
Leon V. Sigal directs the Northeast Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York and editor of ''The North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Regional Perspectives."
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North Korea Wants US to Remove Nuclear Umbrella Protecting South CNSNews.com
North Korea has formally rejected a 13-month-old US proposal to resolve a standoff over its nuclear weapons programs. It also has raised a new demand at talks in Beijing - for the U.S. to remove its nuclear umbrella protecting South Korea. Officials briefing reporters on the closed-door meetings underway in the Chinese capital said the North Korean chief negotiator, Kim Gye-gwan, turned down the proposal put forward by the U.S. at the last round of six-party talks in June 2004. Kim reportedly said the offer was unreasonable because it required North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons before obtaining any incentives. Pyongyang was prepared to give up its nuclear weapons, he said, if the nuclear threat posed by the U.S. was removed and if bilateral diplomatic ties were established. A key disagreement appears to have arisen over what U.S. officials call "sequencing" - who moves first, and in what order the reciprocal steps are taken. The talks, which entered their third day on Thursday, bring together the U.S., North and South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. U.S. officials reportedly were hoping to draft a statement of agreed principles despite prevailing differences, in order to keep the momentum going. Previous rounds of talks ended with little achieved beyond an agreement to meet again. The North Korean demand for the U.S. to withdraw its nuclear protection from South Korea apparently is a shift of tactic since earlier rounds of talks, when the emphasis was on the U.S. ending its "hostile" policy and providing non-aggression guarantees. The U.S. removed all tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea by the early 1990s, but a protective umbrella remains in place, primarily provided by U.S. Navy submarines armed with ballistic and guided nuclear missile. Visiting Seoul in November 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a joint statement with his South Korean counterpart, "reaffirmed the U.S. commitment ... to the continued provision of a nuclear umbrella for the ROK [Republic of Korea], consistent with the Mutual Defense Treaty." Rumsfeld said at a press conference during that visit: "We understand that weakness can be provocative ... neither of our governments would do anything that would in any way weaken the deterrent and the capability to defend." Ralph Cossa, a Korea specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Pacific Forum, said Thursday it was not clear to him exactly what North Korea was now asking for. "If it is a repeat of their long-standing demand to remove U.S. nuclear weapons from the peninsula, this is not a big problem since all were removed from everywhere in 1991," he said. Moreover, the U.S. had agreed to open its facilities in the South to inspection as part of the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a North-South agreement that entered into force in early 1992. However, "none of this has stopped North Korea from demanding we remove nukes from Korea in the past," Cossa noted. On the other hand, North Korea could be pressing for an end to the U.S.-South Korea alliance, "which is of course totally unacceptable." "How one removes the 'nuclear umbrella' without ending the alliance is hard to say," Cossa said. The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has built-in security assurances in that nuclear weapons states are not supposed to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against signatories. But North Korea withdrew from the NPT in April 2003. If Pyongyang returned to the treaty, Cossa said, "this might be finessed." "No one ever said negotiating with Pyongyang would be easy - they traditionally make extreme demands as their going-in position." The question was how the North Koreans ultimately defined their demands and how much flexibility they showed, he added. "Hopefully, the other five members will speak with one voice in rejecting unreasonable demands," Cossa said, warning that North Korea could be "testing for cracks" between the U.S. and Japan on one hand and the other three participants on the other.

'Provisional' concessions
Despite Kim's argument for rejecting the June 2004 offer, U.S. officials at the time presented that proposal as a flexible one. Under the plan, North Korea was expected to declare its intention to eliminate all nuclear programs, and to begin doing so after a three-month preparatory period. In exchange for agreeing to this approach, the other parties - but not the U.S. - would provide North Korea with energy aid, and the other parties - this time including the U.S. - would provide Pyongyang with multilateral assurances of security. The concessions, however, would be tied to actual compliance by North Korea. "These [concessions] would be provisional or temporary in nature and would only yield lasting benefits to [North Korea] after the dismantlement of its nuclear programs had been completed," the then U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, James Kelly, explained to a Senate committee last July.
Analysts: Agreement at Korean Nuclear Talks Will Not Be Easy Voice of America
Uranium issue put aside for N Korea talks Financial Times
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GG30Dg01.html

A way out of the Korean standoff
By Brad Glosserman

Note: The US and North Korea on Friday held a fourth bilateral meeting and are working on a joint declaration that could lay the groundwork for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. A meeting of delegates from the two nations and China, Japan, Russia and South Korea will then begin drafting a declaration. Agreement is still a long way off and more rounds of talks are expected.

All participants in the six-party talks – including North Korea - say that the goal of the negotiations currently underway in Beijing is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Don't bet on it. An unblinkered assessment of the various interests forces one conclusion: the world must prepare for a "gray" North Korea, a nation with a suspected but unconfirmed limited nuclear capability.

This conclusion is based on three premises. First, Pyongyang will do everything possible to preserve some nuclear-weapons capability. For more than four decades, North Korea has sought to acquire or develop a nuclear weapon. This interest is understandable, at least from a North Korean perspective. Pyongyang was threatened by the US with atomic bombs during the Korean War. It is the ultimate piece of military hardware for a government committed to a "military first" policy. Nuclear weapons are an important status symbol for a regime desperate for legitimacy. Building a bomb suggests North Korean technical superiority over South Korea. Finally, it is seen by North Korean strategists as the guarantor of regime survival.

Any one or combination of these rationalizations drives North Korean behavior. Given North Korean history and suspicions, it is extremely unlikely that Pyongyang will abandon its nuclear programs and give up all the weapons it has developed.

Second, despite their rhetorical commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, neither China nor South Korea is ready to enforce the strict verification regime required to eliminate all North Korean weapons. Neither country wants North Korea to demonstrate conclusively that it has nuclear weapons; neither, however, do they want to push Pyongyang so hard to denuclearize that it is destabilized. Both wish to preserve the North Korean government and do not want the chaos and uncertainty a "no-tolerance" policy would create.

There are three ways North Korea could have developed nuclear weapons. The first is with fissile material generated prior to the signing of the Agreed Framework in 1994. According to that agreement, this material would have been accounted for only prior to the delivery of critical components needed for the operation of light-water reactors built by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization. Most intelligence agencies estimate this is enough for one to four weapons.

The second source is the 8,000 fuel rods frozen by the Agreed Framework, and recently reprocessed by the North. Some additional material may have been generated since the collapse of the Agreed Framework. The third source is the enriched uranium program that the US has charged North Korea with developing in violation of the Agreed Framework.

North Korea is probably ready to give up the second and third sources. It agreed to turn over the fuel rods in the Agreed Framework and while it denies having a clandestine uranium program, Pyongyang has reportedly asked what it could receive for abandoning it.

That leaves the plutonium acquired before 1993 and the weapons allegedly created with it. North Korea is unlikely to give this up. Pyongyang's inclination to clutch at this option is strengthened by doubts whether the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can determine how much fissile material was diverted from the North Korean nuclear energy program prior to 1993. China and South Korea are likely to accept this: combine the North's belief in the value of such weapons with Chinese and South Korean reluctance to push the North to the brink and you have the basis for a compromise.

Indeed, Seoul and Beijing have lived with just this situation – a North Korea with a few crude nuclear devices – since 1994. When asked point blank at conferences, Chinese and South Koreans have said that they have lived with a "gray nuclear North Korea" for over a decade. Since China has a permanent veto in the United Nations Security Council, the authority to which the US would turn if the six-party talks prove fruitless, the threat of international sanctions looks toothless.

Thus, the third critical point: the US is going to have to accept this, too. China and South Korea (and Russia) will not back the US demand for "complete verifiable" nuclear disarmament. In these circumstances, it is Washington, not Pyongyang, that risks isolation for pushing too hard. (The Japanese could come down either way.) Doing so could alienate South Korea and marginalize the US on the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia, the real strategic prize. Moreover, accepting the ambiguity surrounding the original plutonium is merely going back to the status quo ante of the Agreed Framework.

By this logic, a six-party agreement would be a gradual process that dismantles the North Korean nuclear infrastructure, starting with the 8,000 fuel rods and then moves on to the disputed uranium-enrichment program. Dismantlement by the North would be matched by economic aid from the South, humanitarian assistance from other parties and diplomatic recognition from the US. The process would be long and carefully calibrated, but by the end the North would be left with whatever nuclear weapons that had been built from the fissile material generated before the Agreed Framework and had been hidden.

The chief concern is whether this deal would be consistent with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Reportedly, the IAEA will have difficulty providing a complete accounting of North Korea's oldest plutonium stocks; that fudge could preserve the credibility of the agency and the treaty, and discourage other countries from trying to copy North Korea.

This is not a happy solution, but it is, by this logic, the best and most realistic solution available. In many ways, it is an updated Agreed Framework: it kicks the can of complete dismantlement down the road. The critical question is whether any such deal can be sold in the US, given the political beating that agreement has endured and the image of North Korea in Washington.

Brad Glosserman is director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS. He can be reached at bradgpf@hawaii.rr.com

Atmosphere Improves at Nuclear Talks Guardian Unlimited
An improved atmosphere might be the most significant accomplishment as six-nation talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament stretched into their longest round Friday, but the top U.S. envoy stressed "this isn't going to be easy.'' After a fourth session of one-on-one meetings between American and North Korean diplomats, they remained split over the North's demand for U.S. concessions before giving up its nuclear weapons program and its insistence on having a peaceful atomic energy project. "The fact that they're continuing to talk to each other is by far the most encouraging sign,'' said Peter Beck, the Seoul-based director of the North East Asia Project for the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank. Beck said the latest round of talks has continued longer than previous rounds - which were marked by bombast - because neither the North nor the Americans seemed to want to be blamed for scuttling the discussions by walking away. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill's meetings with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan have been a marked change that has raised optimism over the talks, which have been run more flexibly than the previous rigidly scheduled negotiations. Still, Beck noted, "we're no farther than we were after the previous rounds of talks in terms of what they have to show for their actions.'' That assessment was backed up by Hill, who told reporters Friday evening: "We have a lot of differences that remain. I don't want to suggest for a minute that this is going to be easy.'' Despite the apparent impasse, the No. 2 South Korean delegate, Cho Tae-yong, said Friday's meetings "were not lower than my expectation.'' "It's too early to pack, or draw conclusions,'' he said. Talks were scheduled to resume Saturday and no date was set for ending the meeting, which also include delegates from Japan, China and Russia. Three earlier rounds of talks each lasted three days. Hill declined to speculate about the length of this round. Rather than focusing on substantive issues in this round, the negotiators were trying to agree on a set of principles as the foundation for later talks, Hill said. "There is a growing consensus that where we end up is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula - that is no nuclear weapons, no nuclear weapons programs ... no nuclear programs that could conceivably be nuclear weapons programs,'' he said. However, he said there was dissension on "how that's going to be sequenced'' - a reference to the North Korean demand for aid and concessions first before giving up its nuclear trump card. Washington wants to see the weapons programs eliminated before it rewards the North. The delegates hope to start drafting a joint document Saturday on what they've agreed to so far, a Japanese official said on condition of anonymity due to the delicate nature of the ongoing talks. The latest nuclear standoff with North Korea was sparked after U.S. officials say the North admitted in late 2002 to running a uranium enrichment program - which could provide fuel for atomic bombs - in violation of an earlier 1994 deal with Washington. North Korea has subsequently denied having such a program, and Hill said Friday that its status was one of the sticking points in a resolution. Also, Hill said the North has insisted it should have the right to use peaceful nuclear technology for power generation if it rejoins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The United States maintains the North shouldn't be allowed to do so because of proliferation concerns. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of the two Koreas adopted a joint statement Friday at an Asian regional summit in Laos calling for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff and better relations between the two countries, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported. The South's Ban Ki-moon and his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam Sun, called for "substantial and constructive progress'' at the nuclear talks, KCNA said. North Korea has insisted the United States remove any nuclear weapons from South Korea as well as its "nuclear umbrella'' of security guarantees to its ally, but Hill said Friday that Washington's alliance with the South "doesn't depend on relations with other countries.'' Hill raised the possibility that the talks might take a break or be conducted at a lower level before resuming again quickly in what he referred to as a "second part of this round.'' "We don't want to have rounds where we walk away and see this rock that we've been pushing up this very steep hill roll all the way back to the bottom of the hill, such that at the next round we have to start pushing it up to the top of the hill again,'' he said. "We want to make progress.''
Further US-N Korea private talks BBC News
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6 Parties Struggle with Final Document
(Park Song-wu, Korea Times)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200...22431610510.htm

Tuesday, August 2
China Tuesday presented the latest draft document, highlighting ways to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, leaving the U.S. and North Korea to decide whether they will accept it or not.

The make-or-break decision is expected to be made at a meeting of top delegates from six nations--the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan--which is set to be held at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

"China's latest draft sums up the results of numerous talks that have been held over the past (eight) days, reflecting the requirements and interests of each country in a balanced way," Song Min-soon, South Korea's top delegate, said at a press briefing. He added that it needed one more day to see what kind of reactions participating countries would have after holding ``internal consultations." It indicates that delegates from North Korea and the U.S., among others, need approvals from their home countries before signing this long-awaited deal.

North Korea Talks' Duration Signals New Tacks
(Murray Hiebert and Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1122787...N=wsjie/archive

Monday, August 1
As multilateral talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear-weapons programs stretched into a sixth day in Beijing, analysts and diplomats said the negotiations' duration is a sign of a new U.S. approach to dealing with Pyongyang.

Throughout the talks, the U.S. delegation, led by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has shown a new willingness to engage in long one-on-one meetings with the North Koreans and a more conciliatory tone in its public comments. Mr. Hill also has hinted at more flexibility in order to make diplomatic progress. Jonathan Pollack, an Asia specialist at the U.S. Naval War College, argues that all this "reflects a change in attitude, if not a change in policy" by Washington.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GH04Dg03.html

Trading, Pyongyang-style
By Andrei Lankov

SEOUL - As of Wednesday, the six-party talks in Beijing aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program are reported to being close to a statement of principles after nine days of negotiations.

The US wants Pyongyang to abandon its entire nuclear program, including the development of nuclear energy, in return for food, economic aid and security guarantees - and the opportunity to join the world trading community. North Korea is reported to be in contact with the World Trade Organization to obtain observer status.

Anyone wanting to trade with North Korea, however, should take a hard look at its history in this arena.

In 1993, North Korean trade agencies approached the Thai government about purchasing some 600,000 tons of rice. It was shipped by several companies, but payment did not come. After some waiting, the government had to intervene, and after much hard work by Thai diplomats, partial payment was agreed on - but about US$190 million still remains unpaid.

The Thai businessmen, before venturing into deals with North Korea, should have asked those with the longest track records of trading with Pyongyang - Russians and Chinese - about the pitfalls. Former Soviet trade mission clerks would likely have advised the Thais that something like this was likely to happen.

North Korea in its half-century of existence seldom engaged in normal international trade based on the reciprocity principle of fairness in exchanges between nations. From the mid-1950s until recently, economic exchanges conducted by North Korea ostensibly were usually political in nature: Pyongyang had only a limited number of active trade partners and those were willing to conclude remarkably unprofitable deals on the assumption this was a way to pay for some important gains, usually strategic rather than economic.

While North Korean propaganda loudly proclaimed the alleged economic self-reliance of the country, Pyongyang quietly digested huge amounts of Soviet and Chinese aid. This aid ceased to be recognized from the late 1950s, when Kim Il-sung began to build his own nationalistic Stalinism. Nonetheless, the paramount significance of this aid was vividly demonstrated in the early 1990s when it came to a sudden halt due to the collapse of Soviet communism. North Korea is now starting to find other other sources of direct and indirect aid, in fact the country continues to look for aid in the current six-party talks.

In 1991, Natalya Bazhanova, with a research center associated with the Russian Foreign Ministry, estimated the amount of Soviet aid from 1948 to 1984 was worth $2.2 billion. However, this figure should not be seen as a complete estimate, since it does not take into account the indirect forms of aid that were so important.

Quite often the aid masqueraded as "trade". In most cases, economic exchanges between Moscow and Pyongyang were unequal: the USSR provided the North with merchandise it could sell on the international market - oil, gas, weapons and some industrial equipment. All these goods were bartered for North Korean products - bad tobacco, pickled vegetables, plastic boots and liquor even Russian farmers found almost undrinkable. These would be impossible to sell internationally. If the North Koreans somehow managed to produce something of reasonable quality, they sold it on the international market, despite such sales being a breach of agreements with their Soviet partners. (This author still remembers frequent complains by Soviet trade officials in the mid-1980s).

On top of that, prices that were used to calculate the amount of the bartered goods were deliberately distorted in the Koreans' favor, and frequent delays with shipping and payments were also the norm. When the debt became too large, it was restructured on terms very favorable to Pyongyang.

Needless to say, these decades of imbalanced trade were by no means a result of Soviet generosity and kindness, but rather reflected the strategic considerations of Moscow. North Korea had to be subsidized in order to keep its inefficient and hyper-militarized economy afloat so as to remain an irritant in the Cold War era's "Great Game" against the US.

However, the North Koreans were not merely passive recipients of the Soviet strategic grants. Pyongyang diplomats learned how to maximize the aid inflow - and how to manipulate the donors.

Their strategy was based on the skillful use of the Sino-Soviet rivalry. Moscow saw China then as a great threat, probably even more menacing than the US, and the Soviets were willing to do anything to isolate China. Thus, from the 1960s recurring instructions to the Soviet ambassadors to North Korea from Moscow were "keep them neutral or win them over to our side". The North Koreans were not too eager to join the Russians' side, but they were always ready to hint that their neutrality should be paid for, by some additional credit or by general willingness to accept unfavorable trade conditions. In a sense, it was a "negative concession": the North Koreans extracted payments not for doing something, but as a reward for not doing something (that is, not becoming too close to China).

Much less is known about relations with China, but it seems that same strategy of aid-extraction was applied to Beijing as well.

It is telling that between 1990 and 1992 exchanges between the Soviet Union and North Korea collapsed dramatically almost overnight. In 1990, the trade volume between the two countries was $1.14 billion, but the next year it dropped to $360 million and then continued its downward slide until it eventually leveled off at about $100 million. It was not the result of some deliberate embargo or political pressure - if anything, the post-Soviet governments would like to see Russian companies trading with North Korea. But the newly emerged Russian capitalist enterprises demanded payments in money, not