Speech Sparks Hope for Talks on N. Korea

Asian officials and analysts Thursday welcomed President Bush’s softer tone toward North Korea in his State of the Union address, expressing hope that it would help jump-start a new round of talks aimed at halting Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

However, given the tough stance of the Bush administration during its first term, analysts said it would take more than softer words and the hint of cooperation to convince North Korea that Washington was willing to be more flexible.

In contrast to his speech three years ago in which he branded North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an axis of evil, Bush only briefly mentioned the isolated Stalinist state in his speech Wednesday.

His message -- that Washington and other Asian nations were trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions -- was also seen as less confrontational.

Li Dunqiu, an analyst with the Chinese Society for the Study of Korean History, a government-affiliated think tank, said he hoped Bush would make real strides to resolve the situation now that he was in his last term and didn’t need to curry favor with voters.

“He may really want to solve the problem, we can’t exclude that possibility,” Li said.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said it believed that Bush’s speech “reflected Washington’s will to resolve the North’s nuclear issue through peaceful and diplomatic measures,” Reuters reported.

Two U.S. envoys from the National Security Council visited China, South Korea and Japan this week to discuss reviving the North Korea talks, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said. Michael Green, the council’s senior director for Asian affairs, and William Tobey, its acting senior director for nonproliferation, also delivered a letter from the president at each stop, she said.

Despite the more diplomatic tone, analysts said, Bush has assembled what appears to be a hard-line team for his second term, without the moderating influence of people such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Disclosures this week by U.S. officials to the New York Times and other media that uranium found in Libya had probably come from North Korea seemed designed to put more public pressure on Pyongyang. And Bush’s speech had a hawkish tone overall, even if North Korea wasn’t singled out, analysts said.

A fourth round of six-nation talks planned for September was canceled after North Korea refused to attend. Many saw the delay as a tactical move by Pyongyang to assess whether Bush would be reelected, what Asia team he would put in place and what tone he would set in the State of the Union speech.

With those events played out, analysts said they expected North Korea to accept an invitation for new talks in the next few months, probably after a working-level meeting proposed by China.

Since the totalitarian regime of leader Kim Jong Il doesn’t answer to the citizenry in the way more pluralistic societies do, North Korea is not under immediate pressure to reach an agreement, despite its devastated economy.

“I don’t think they can afford to wait four more years until another U.S. administration comes in,” Choi Jang Jip, a political scientist at Seoul’s Korea University, said in a telephone interview. “But they can wait awhile.”

North Korea recently signaled that it had begun to think about its next generation of leaders. The country has been under the rule of Kim or his father, the late Kim Il Sung, for almost six decades.

South Korean media reported last week that a commentary on state-run radio in the North said, “Our founder Kim Il Sung, when he was alive, emphasized that if he falls short of completing the revolution, it will be continued by his son and grandson.”

Though analysts have speculated for years that the world’s only communist dynasty would hand the reins to a third generation, that Jan. 27 report appeared to be the closest thing yet to official confirmation.

Analysts said third-generation leaders, whether in family business or politics, often lack the leadership qualities of their grandfather’s generation or the discipline of their father’s. It also remains to be seen whether events inside and outside North Korea will allow the Kims to hold on to power for another generation, they added.

The timing of Kim Jong Il’s apparent announcement, which comes shortly before his 63rd birthday Feb. 16, follows a rough precedent. In the 1970s, Kim Il Sung, also in his early 60s, paved the way for his son to succeed him.

Kim Jong Il has three sons: Kim Jong Nam, 34; Kim Jong Chol, 24; and Kim Jong Un, 22.

North Korea watchers said the youngest son was the heir apparent and supposedly his father’s favorite, in part because he was seen as the closest in personality to his father.

“Of course, before Kim Jong Il makes his decision, anything is possible,” said Zhang Liangui, an analyst with the Central Party School in Beijing. “North Korea remains a very closed society.”

Kim reportedly views his middle son as effeminate. And the eldest, who is a half-brother to the other two, was discredited by association after his mother fled the country in disgrace. Jong Nam also embarrassed his father when he was caught trying to sneak into Japan in 2001 under a Dominican Republic passport, reportedly to visit Tokyo Disneyworld.

Looking outside the family fold is possible, analysts said, but potentially dangerous.

“The North Korean regime is dependent on family members,” said Jin Linbo, Asia-Pacific Studies director at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing. “From their perspective, they can’t trust anyone outside the family.”

If a decision is made to begin grooming a son, analysts said, precedent suggests the designee will first be exposed to a small, elite group of top officials. Under North Korea’s top-down system, the elites matter most.

Over several years, the son would be rotated through a series of party and government positions without real power, working with senior officials able to show him the ropes. Eventually, as the transition approached and he gained more confidence, he could be given greater responsibility and a higher profile in the national media.

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Yin Lijin in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.