[imText1]North Korean leader Kim Jong Il reportedly told Tang Jiaxuan, Chinese special envoy to Pyongyang, that he would “fulfill the 1992 Korean Peninsula Denuclearization Joint-statement.”
Sources from Tokyo reported that, on Saturday, the Chinese government transferred the statement by Kim to its Japanese counterpart.
According to the Japanese sources, Kim reaffirmed his father the late Kim Il Sung’s “testament” of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Although Kim did not mention directly the possibility of resuming the six-party talks, the leader said that he would “watch the next step by the U.S.”, indirectly asking Washington to revoke financial sanctions as a precondition of resumption of the talks.
Based on Kim’s words, Beijing told the other members of the six-party talks that North Korea would not conduct additional nuke tests, though it was uncertain whether Kim clearly stated this.
A Japanese official said on condition of anonymity that both the governments in Washington and Tokyo did not believe North Korea changed its standpoint yet, and the Japanese government would especially scrutinize what Kim actually meant.
Kim’s commitment to the Korean Peninsula’s denuclearization is exactly the same as what he told Chung Dong Young, then South Korean unification minister, last June. In the June meeting, Kim Jong Il confirmed the 1992 denuclearization agreement, and moved on to evacuation of American forces in South Korea and U.S.-NK disarmament pact, ultimately.
Therefore, Kim’s “denuclearization” theory is nothing new compared to what North Korea has been arguing since the joint statement for denuclearization between North and South Korea in 1992.
At the peak of the first phase of nuclear crisis in 1994, Kim Il Sung already told former U.S. President Carter in a summit his unwillingness to develop nuclear weapons and commitment to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
Thus, since there is a precondition of disarming nuclear warheads, for the revocation of financial sanctions, there is nothing improved in North Korea’s denuclearization commitment.
