Under Pressure, North Korea Calls for Meeting With South

Ever since North Korea announced in March that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, raising the specter of a nuclear arms race in Asia, the West has been tightening a noose around the Stalinist state.

Now, threatened by economic sanctions and lured by a more friendly attitude in South Korea, North Korea appears ready to talk.

In a letter delivered Tuesday through the heavily armed Panmunjom border crossing, North Korean Prime Minister Kang Song San proposed high-level talks to prepare for a summit meeting. It would be the first meeting between the heads of state of the two Koreas.

“We are happy to note that the new government, unlike previous (South Korean) governments, is interested in the national welfare of the Korean people,” Kang said in his letter. He called for a meeting Monday to prepare for talks that would pave the way for the summit.

Earlier, the United States announced that a delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gallucci will meet with North Korean officials in New York next Wednesday. At that meeting, only the second of its kind since the end of the Korean War, U.S. officials said they would warn North Korea that it must open its nuclear facilities to international inspection or face international sanctions.

Some South Korean officials fear that North Korea’s proposal for summit talks, coming on top of Pyongyang’s talks with the United States, may be a ploy to delay sanctions or to test South Korea’s willingness to take a stance independent of the United States.

President Kim Young Sam’s government has indicated it does not want to see North Korea isolated. Some officials have even expressed the desire for closer ties with the north regardless of the outcome of the nuclear talks.

Han Wan Sang, a former dissident whom Kim appointed as his deputy prime minister for unification, recently said that “the nuclear issue should not drive out all other contacts between North and South Korea.”

This may be one reason why North Korea specifically requested that preliminary talks take place at the level of deputy prime minister, essentially calling on Seoul to send Han to represent this country.

Because Kim has also publicly offered to meet with North Korean President Kim Il Sung at a time and place of his choosing, he will be hard-put to refuse talks aimed at arranging such a meeting.

Yet if the talks go ahead, they could undercut Washington’s effort to put pressure on North Korea. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires that its signers give 90 days’ advance notice before withdrawing. North Korea’s withdrawal takes effect June 12. The United States would presumably ask the U.N. Security Council to impose economic sanctions on Pyongyang soon afterward.

But trade sanctions by the United Nations would require the approval, or at least the abstention, of China, a member of the Security Council. China, which is North Korea’s closest ally, has expressed reluctance to go along with sanctions and could feel justified in vetoing such a move if talks were being planned by the two Koreas.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, in Seoul on Thursday for the first high-level Chinese visit since the two nations normalized relations last August, reaffirmed China’s position that the problem should be resolved between “the countries involved,” presumably a reference to the two Koreas.

Korea and the United States have both offered economic assistance to North Korea as an inducement to open its nuclear facilities to inspection. That may ultimately be the most effective approach.

“North Korea is trying to use its nuclear leverage to solve its economic problems,” said Kim Tae Woo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, a quasi-governmental organization.

Lack of cash to pay for imported fuel has brought much of North Korea’s industry to a halt. Such conditions make it difficult for Kim Il Sung to fully carry out a transfer of power to his son, Kim Jong Il.

But analyst Kim doubts that even a North Korean agreement to open itself to inspection will resolve the nuclear weapons issue because, he says, North Korea has many places to hide plutonium and build nuclear weapons in secret.

As the two Koreas gradually move closer together, friction with the United States could increase as South Korea finds it increasingly difficult to side with Washington against North Korea.

“For South Korea, it is a very complex situation,” Kim said. “It is true that North Korea is a threat. But North Koreans are our people. The United States should understand that.”