Kim Young Nam, Permanent Chairperson of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly and nominal North Korean head of state, has put forward three precursors to North Korea’s return to the Six-Party Talks.
According to a January 23rd Nihon Geizai Shimbun report, Kim apparently informed a recent meeting of Italian lawmakers in Pyongyang that the conclusion of a peace treaty between North Korea, the U.S. and China, bilateral negotiations with the U.S. regarding North Korea’s security, and the removal of economic sanctions against North Korea were the three main requirements for a return to the Six-Party Talks.
The most important of these three is the peace treaty, because it means bringing the Korean War to an official end.
Thus, North Korea’s insistence on the need for a peace treaty with the U.S. and China is an attempt to make ongoing military tension between the North and U.S., which North Korea claims is generated by the lack of said peace treaty, into a just cause for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and make China, which tries to stay out of the conflict beyond acting as mediator, appear partly responsible for the status quo and take a share of international pressure to find a solution.
Additionally, North Korea is trying to add new agenda items to the basic agenda: denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. The North’s intention is to shirk responsibility for breaking the 2005 agreement concluded in the first round of Six-Party Talks and lay the foundations for dragging bilateral talks with the U.S. into nuclear disarmament talks on the Korean Peninsula.
On the 18th, North Korea announced its refusal to go back to the Six-Party Talks negotiating table, saying in a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement, “Taking part in the Six-Party Talks whilst under sanctions would be the same as going before judges as the accused, so the talks are not egalitarian, something which is specified in the September 19 Joint Statement.”
In a similar vein, during last week’s talks with the Italian delegation Kim Young Nam also emphasized that when South Korea gives up its reliance on the U.S.’ nuclear umbrella for its security, North Korea will be willing to go further toward denuclearization.
