North Korean Newsbriefs

The Sixth Round of the Six-Party TalksNorth Korea shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July 2007 and began disablement of its three facilities in exchange for energy aid, political guarantees, and normalized relations with the United States. This came after the 13 February sixparty agreement, which entitles the impoverished Stalinist state to receive 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent, so long as certain conditions are met. The events of July were followed by U.S.-North Korea talks in August, a bilateral working group meeting in Geneva from 1 to 2 September, and the 2 to 4 October sixDuksung party talks in Beijing. The latter laid out a timetable of 31 December for disablement in the tentative six-party accord, "Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement," announced on 3 October. A team of U.S. nuclear experts arrived in North Korea on 1 November and began monitoring disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities four days later.The Bush administration is now pursuing a more reconciliatory foreign policy of engagement with Pyongyang, having vaguely promised in Geneva to begin the process of delisting North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism upon its completing the disablement process and providing a full declaration of all nuclear programs by the end of 2007. If North Korea is removed from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states, the poverty-stricken regime will be eligible for large multilateral financial aid, including loans from the World Bank. North Korea has completed phase one of the February agreement by shutting down the Yongbyon reactor complex; phase two consists of declaring and permanently disabling all nuclear facilities, which is ongoing as of this writing; and the third phase, complete dismantlement of all nuclear programs and facilities, is set for the end of 2008. The possibility of a sudden reversal in U.S.-North Korea policy cannot be ruled out, however.According to an unnamed senior U.S. official quoted in Chosun Ilbo in October, delisting North Korea as a terror sponsor would take a considerable amount of time to actually implement. Furthermore, it would require Congressional approval. Hardliners representing contending political factions in Washington, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who are committed to the rightwing doctrine of "regime change," as carried out in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, have criticized engagement and raised allegations about North Korea providing nuclear assistance to Syria, an ally of Iran. These accusations followed an apparently unprovoked Israeli air raid on Syrian targets on 6 September. North Korea has provided missile technology to Syria, but both countries strongly denied any nuclear connection.The Japanese government also expressed opposition to delisting North Korea, citing the abduction issue. On 9 October, Tokyo extended by six months trade sanctions originally imposed in 2006 after the North Korean nuclear test. This decision has strained U.S.-Japan bilateral ties and the alliance in the "war on terror" to some extent, complicated subsequently by Japanese suspension in November of fuel to U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, an action taken in response to the Democratic Party of Japan, which refused to support enabling legislation in the Diet. Popular hostility in Japan to the U.S.-led "war on terror" is another factor. Tokyo maintains that North Korea kidnapped seventeen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies. Thirteen were accounted for and five repatriated to Japan in 2002. Pyongyang, considering the matter closed, maintains that the remaining eight are dead and there are no more Japanese abductees in the country. The agreements thus brokered between the U.S. and North Korea have, in spite of their apparent tenuousness, opened some room for negotiations between the leaders of the two Koreas.Joint Document of the Second Session of the Sixth Round of the Six-Party TalksA joint document, named the "Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement," was released on October 3, 2007, after a two-day recess of the second session of the sixth round of the six-party talks. …