▲ Seminar co-hosted by the USIP and the Asia Society entitled 'Sanctions and/or Engagement: How to Change North Korean Behavior' ⓒ the Daily NK

New York -- China has offered North Korea a “Grand Bargain” of its own, a comprehensive relationship encompassing all forms of bilateral contacts and assistance; diplomatic, military, economic and commercial, says researcher John Park, who, along with John Delury of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, believes that engaging North Korea may put more pressure on it than further isolation.

Park, a senior researcher and the director for Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), and Delury were speaking at a seminar co-hosted by the USIP and the Asia Society entitled “Sanctions and/or Engagement: How to Change North Korean Behavior,” where they were joined by Daniel Glaser, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes in the U.S. Treasury.

According to Park, Wen Jiabao’s visit to Pyongyang last month symbolized a “very important political investment” by China in the future of North Korea, which showed Pyongyang that Beijing sees “mutual prosperity” in the future, rather than any threat to the integrity of the North Korean regime.

Park believes that China is actually no less committed to denuclearization than any other party, but has concluded that the nuclear issue will be current and unresolved for some considerable time to come, and so stability has to take a leading role in the short to medium term. To this end, Beijing has decided to work with North Korea on a bilateral basis, while working with the international community to try and achieve denuclearization on a twin-track basis.

These two tracks, the bilateral/development track and the international/denuclearization track, are being pursued independently of one another, hedging against failure on either front.

This Chinese policy is one that John Delury agrees with, advocating pursuing cultural (in the form of U.S.-North Korean university exchanges, for example) and economic contacts (keeping one eye on future North Korean membership of international financial institutions such as the Asia Development Bank) and keeping lines of communication with Pyongyang open.