Center for International Policy

As printed in The Seoul Times

August 7 , 2006

Diplomatic Flurry in Asia on Eve of Arms Talks
by James Brooke of The New York Times

Tokyo is abuzz with reports that the prime minister of Japan is planning a visit to North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korea and North Korea are organizing a meeting of army generals, the highest level inter-Korean military meeting in decades.

Pieces in Northeast Asia's long frozen security puzzle are starting to shift as envoys from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas converge Wednesday in Beijing for midlevel talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

"The North Koreans have been told by the Chinese: 'Cool it, tone down the rhetoric, don't look like a belligerent power to the world', " Selig S. Harrison, an expert on North Korea, said by telephone from his office at the Center for International Policy in Washington.

While North Korea waits to see what happens in the American presidential election, he said, it is taking conciliatory steps toward the United States' two closest allies in the region, Japan and South Korea.

In Tokyo, newspapers reported Tuesday that Japanese diplomats were preparing a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Pyongyang in late May. According to these reports, Mr. Koizumi will travel to North Korea's capital to take back to Japan the children of five Japanese who had been abducted by North Korea and whom he brought home on an earlier trip, in September 2002.

Mr. Koizumi's popularity soared after that trip, only to sink after the Japanese public realized that the abductees' children had been left behind and that North Korea had kidnapped many more Japanese. With elections in Parliament's upper house set for July, Mr. Koizumi may see a narrow window to raise his popularity with a dramatic move.

Mr. Koizumi has been coy, telling reporters on Monday, "Media reports seem to be saying various things, but there is nothing I can say at this point."

Japanese officials are wary of irritating the Bush administration, which wants a united front of North Korea's neighbors in dealing with the North's nuclear weapons program. Japanese and North Korean negotiators are expected to meet separately during the nuclear talks in Beijing this week.

Hiroyuki Hosoda, Mr. Koizumi's chief cabinet secretary, cautioned Monday that "there are a number of things that need to be worked out before a summit can be held." But he stressed that North Korea had recently shown a new "willingness to advance dialogue."

In legislation aimed at North Korea, the Japanese Parliament recently passed a law allowing economic sanctions against any country threatening Japan's national security. Now it is considering a bill to ban port calls by designated ships. On Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency urged Japan to think twice about the "disastrous consequences" that would follow sanctions.

North Korea is also trying to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea, where members of a newly elected liberal majority in the National Assembly take their seats on May 30.

North Korea welcomed South Korean relief aid for the April 22 train explosion in Ryongchon, allowing a convoy of 20 trucks to cross the demilitarized zone on Friday and a ship with steam shovels and steel girders to dock Monday near the site of the blast. And on Friday, the North accepted a South Korean invitation for high-level military talks, a rarity for two countries still technically at war.

"This is a proof that economic exchanges and cooperation will lead to building up trust in military affairs as well," Jeong Se Hyun, South Korea's unification minister, told reporters on Saturday on returning here from Pyongyang.

Next month, the new National Assembly is expected to debate dropping North Korea's classification as an enemy from South Korea's National Security Law.

In a measure of growing inter-Korean economic cooperation, Hyun Jung Eun, the chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group, arrived Tuesday in Pyongyang to meet officials involved in the group's business projects in the North.

Against this rising tide of inter-Korean peaceful coexistence, conservative newspapers in South Korea published articles last week saying satellite photographs indicate that the North is building new bases to launch missiles with ranges long enough to hit Okinawa or Guam, islands with American bases.

"They have never stopped in their missile development plan; they are continuing it," said Kim Tae Woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, adding that he could not confirm the newspaper reports.

Noting that North Korea has intensified its "smile diplomacy," he warned, "Their appeasement posture is designed to separate Japan and South Korea from the United States."