Back to the party

The six-party talks, that is.

After walking away from the negotiating table nearly a year ago, North Korea has agreed to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program. Those talks, which the North is linking to resolution of the U.S. financial sanctions on it, could resume before the end of the year.

Reaction here seems to be mixed, with the Chosun Ilbo lambasting the South Korean government for essentially rendering the country’s interests irrelevant as other nations negotiate with the North.

Of course, the substantive reason the North is returning to the six-party talks so soon is the pain from well-coordinated international sanctions since the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution sanctioning it. What’s more, North Korea will have been shocked by the reality that China, its trusted ally in many a crisis, acted as a messenger conveying the U.S. response and mobilized its own means of pressure.

Such an abrupt shift in the situation of the international community made a mockery of this government’s remark that entrusting our fate with the UN would be tantamount to giving up our own fate. It also proved the prophets of doom wrong, former president Kim Dae-jung among them, who said North Korea will counter UN sanctions with military action. They exposed themselves not as prophets of the Northeast Asian future but pitiful objects of North Korean blackmail, as Pyongyang’s toys. From the outset, North Korea was looking over South Korea’s head and contemplating bigger transactions.

The six-country talks will become more complicated. Having excluded the South from their efforts to resume the talks, the U.S., China and North Korea will not allow the South to play any great role in the give-and-take negotiation among them.

The Hankyoreh has a pretty straightforward story on the announcement, but also ran this editorial speculating that North Korea is waiting for a shift in power stateside to bail it out of this hole, a possibility the writer thinks is wishful thinking.

Given U.S. tradition and physiology, however, there is not going to be an immediate change in that policy, even if the current majority party loses. The only weapon a Democratic Congress would have to bring about changes in White House policy would be for Pyongyang to give the signal that it is going to give up, unconditionally, on its nuclear program. That is why Pyongyang desperately needs to send Washington a sign that it cannot refuse. If, that is, there is going to be a resolution to the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.

I don’t know that I agree with his interpretation of U.S. history regarding shifts in U.S. diplomacy, but thought it was worth mentioning.

Will stay tuned…