The Marmot’s Hole

By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger

After about a year of being thought near-death, the six party talks finally began anew this week with cautious optimism that this time some good might come out of them.

Before too long, however, it appeared as though things might be tough going.

The Asia Times contributor Brad Glosserman presented one way to make the talks “successful” — change the meaning of “successful.”

China and South Korea (and Russia) will not back the US demand for “complete verifiable” nuclear disarmament. In these circumstances, it is Washington, not Pyongyang, that risks isolation for pushing too hard. (The Japanese could come down either way.) Doing so could alienate South Korea and marginalize the US on the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia, the real strategic prize. Moreover, accepting the ambiguity surrounding the original plutonium is merely going back to the status quo ante of the Agreed Framework.

By this logic, a six-party agreement would be a gradual process that dismantles the North Korean nuclear infrastructure, starting with the 8,000 fuel rods and then moves on to the disputed uranium-enrichment program. Dismantlement by the North would be matched by economic aid from the South, humanitarian assistance from other parties and diplomatic recognition from the US. The process would be long and carefully calibrated, but by the end the North would be left with whatever nuclear weapons that had been built from the fissile material generated before the Agreed Framework and had been hidden.

At week’s end, the talks were struggling towards some sort of joint statement that might make everyone involved happy. As Bloomberg puts it:

“I don’t think the six parties will make a major breakthrough this time around,” said Park Tae Gyun, a professor of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University. “They may be able to agree on the general direction of the talks. Still, the talks seem to be positive, better than I had expected.”

[...]

North Korea remains concerned by “sequencing,” the order in which measures to control its nuclear program and the aid and security guarantees that the communist state seeks in return are organized, Hill said yesterday. The U.S. says international control of North Korea’s nuclear activities must be a pre- condition for aid.

Among the other big news was the announcement that former newspaper publisher Hong Seok Hyun and current Korean ambassador to the United States is resigning from his position because of a growing wire-tapping scandal involving slush-funds and Samsung.

That story provides us with our “Quote of the Week:”

MBC TV reported last week that the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s spy agency, secretly recorded a conversation between Hong - then publisher of the mass-circulation newspaper JoongAng Ilbo - and Lee Hak Soo, a high-ranking official with the Samsung Group, South Korea’s largest business conglomerate.

JoongAng Ilbo publishes a daily newspaper in English for distribution in South Korea, with the International Herald Tribune as a partner.