In and Around North Korea: 24 - 30 January 2009

• Xinhua news agency reported that Kim Jong-il said, on 23 Jan, he wanted a nuclear free Korean peninsula, declaring his willingness to work with China to push forward the six-party process. Kim stated, “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and hopes to live in peace with all other sides. … We don’t want to see tension emerge in the situation on the peninsula, and we are willing to strengthen coordination and cooperation with China and push forward the six-party process without interruption.” The United States welcomed the remarks. The US State Department spokesman Robert Woods said, “That’s a good thing. I mean, if you go back to September 2005, the North Koreans to take a number of steps toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. So we hope to see the North adhere to what it agreed to.” South Korea also welcomed Kim Jong-il’s reported commitment.

• Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday (26 Jan) he believes North Korea would be willing to give up its nuclear weapons for US diplomatic recognition, a peace deal with South Korea and America, and if it got new atomic power reactors and free fuel oil. "It could be worked out, in my opinion, in half a day," Carter said in an interview Monday (26 Jan) with The Associated Press.

• The US Secretary of State Clinton said Tuesday (27 Jan) that six-party talks are "essential" to ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions and that North Korea's nuclear proliferation should be resolved quickly through direct diplomacy of the US if necessary. Secretary Clinton said in her first news briefing since taking office on 22 Jan that "With respect to North Korea, the six-party talks are essential," adding the multilateral talks have been "a useful forum for participants to deal with the challenge of North Korea's nuclear program, and the other issues that are part of the North Korean agenda."

• Top South Korean and Japanese nuclear negotiators on Thursday (29 Jan) discussed how to advance the stalled six-way talks on the North Korean nuclear program, officials here said. Seoul's envoy Kim Sook and his counterpart Akitaka Saiki had a luncheon meeting in Seoul. "They had wide-ranging exchange of opinions on the six-way talks," foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said. He refused to elaborate, saying related officials will later provide a separate press briefing on the talks.

• A new round of six-party working group talks on the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is expected to be held next month in Moscow, a foreign ministry official said Wednesday (28 Jan). The expectation comes with reports that Russia's chief nuclear negotiator, Alexander Losyukov, is visiting Pyongyang. The peace regime working group is one of the five working groups which the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed to create in 2007 to resolve the deadlock over the North's nuclearization issue.

• North Korea said on Friday (30 Jan) that it is scrapping all political and military agreements with South Korea and declared a western sea border void, sharply raising tensions and the possibility of a naval clash. The move revived tensions of the Cold War era, trampling a landmark accord that the Koreas reached in 1991 to prevent military clashes and boost reconciliatory efforts. Seoul expressed "deep regret" and urged Pyongyang to agree to dialogue. North Korea blasted the South Korean government and said the hard-line policies of Lee Myung-bak forced it to scrap the accords. "The group of traitors has already reduced all the agreements reached between the north and the south in the past to dead documents," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, a body handling inter-Korean affairs, said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). "Under such situation it is self-evident that there is no need for the DPRK to remain bound to those north-south agreements," it said.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-il enjoyed a performance given by the North's state merited chorus on the occasion of the lunar New Year, which fell on Monday (26 Jan), its state media reported on Tuesday (27 Jan). According to the North's KCNA, the performance “truthfully represented the unshakable faith and will of the army and people to accomplish the revolutionary cause of Juche (self-reliance)" under the leadership of Kim Jong-il. After the performance was over, Kim reportedly expressed the expectation and conviction that all of them would conduct dynamic revolutionary art activities and thus fully display the might of buglers in the Songun (military first) era.

• Kim Jong-nam (38), the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, last Saturday (24 Jan) said his father alone determines who succeeds him. Kim Jong-nam made the remark in Beijing. It was his first comment on the sensitive issue of who will succeed the ailing leader, from whom he is said to have been estranged.

• Kim Yong Il, prime minister of North Korea, said 22 Jan that North Korea is willing to further strengthen economic and trade cooperation with China. Kim Yong Il made his statement during his meeting with Wang Jiarui, head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

• Yonhap news agency reported on 23 Jan the United Nations will soon resume development projects in North Korea, nearly two years after it suspended work in the communist state over suspicions that funds were being misappropriated. The executive board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) made the decision after North Korea agreed to guarantee independent auditing and to alter the methods for payment and selection of North Korean staff, the source said on customary condition of anonymity. "We expect the UNDP will resume its projects during the first half of the year with a UNDP office reopening (in Pyongyang) in March," the source said, expressing hope the office would coordinate projects involving the World Food Program, UNICEF and other U.N. organizations in North Korea.

• A United Nations committee questioned North Korean officials on 23 Jan about the communist country's policy on protecting the human rights of children in the country, the first such session since 2004. The one-day session on North Korea conducted by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva is the third of its kind after similar sessions in 1998 and 2004 looking into malnutrition, infant mortality and budget cuts related to children's welfare. The committee's review is expected to become a guideline for a possible resolution on North Korea's human rights if it is put to a vote at the U.N. General Assembly later this year.

• The United Nations envoy on human rights in North Korea said Tuesday (27 Jan) that the entire United Nations should work together to improve the "grim" situation in the hard-line communist nation. "I ask the total U.N. system to act, on the basis of graduated pressures, graduated influences," Vitit Muntarbhorn said in Tokyo.

• KCNA reported on 23 Jan that “A special investigation committee for nuclear weapons management and examination of the U.S. Department of Defense recently made public a report designating the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state. The report said that the DPRK has not only several nuclear weapons but a missile system capable of delivering them. Commenting on this, foreign press reports said that the report put the DPRK in the same category as that of India and Pakistan recognized as unofficial nuclear weapons states.”

• North Korea is preparing to send a satellite into space in the coming months from its brand new rocket launch facility on the west coast, posing yet another serious challenge to global security, an American expert in Seoul said Thursday (29 January). If conducted, it would be provocative because such a long-range rocket is a dual-use technology that can be used for inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, according to Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst at the Brussels-based security think tank International Crisis Group. He said North Korea has almost completed the construction of the cutting-edge facility in its northwestern hinterland. He cited satellite photos and testimonies by several experts on missile and space program. "It is much more extensive than the former launch facility in Musudan-ri on the east coast," he told Yonhap news agency in an interview. "I understand North Korea could launch a rocket from the facility as early as this spring if the Paektusan-2, more commonly known as the Taepodong-2, is ready for testing."

• South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Friday (23 Jan) called on the military to be fully prepared to counter any provocation from North Korea while adding the nation's top priority is securing peace and reconciliation between the divided Koreas. The call comes less than a week after the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) said it would now take an "all-out confrontation posture" against the South.

• The South Korean government announced on Wednesday (28 Jan) it will not allow local activists to bring in North Korean currency for the purpose of resending it to the North along with anti-communist leaflets. "The government's position is that it should not permit bringing in North Korean bills, due to concern that it may damage the order of inter-Korean exchanges," Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for the Unification Ministry handling North Korea affairs, told reporters.

• South Korea’s Unification Ministry is drawing up an extensive list of South Koreans believed to have been kidnapped by North Korea. Families of abductees have long demanded that the government make more of an effort to have their loved ones returned. Their fates, however, have remained largely unknown for decades. According to unnamed government officials, the Unification Ministry formed a special two-man task force to create a database on the abductees. They said the move is aimed at being “better prepared for possible negotiations on the abductees with the North.”

• North Korean citizens observed the Lunar New Year holiday on Monday (26 Jan), exchanging well-wishing remarks and playing folk games, as the nation continued traditional celebrations despite deep economic woes. State-run media portrayed citizens greeting the holiday as "vivacious" and "optimistic," reporting on various festive sights in Pyongyang including a bustling souvenir shop, a children's folk games contest and neon signs sparkling downtown.

• The new US administration is reportedly considering New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Stephen Bosworth for the post of special envoy to North Korea.

• North Korea issued on 21 Jan a relatively positive report on President Obama's inauguration, apparently signaling its willingness to engage the new US Administration. Suggesting trouble ahead for the Six-Party Talks and inter-Korean relations, however, the message came in the wake of two authoritative North Korean pronouncements that appear designed to solidify its negotiating positions with the United States and South Korea.

• South Korea will deploy remote-controlled mines along its heavily fortified border with North Korea by 2013, a defense ministry spokesman said Tuesday (27 Jan). Bids have been invited for the development of the new mines called "spider bombs," the spokesman told AFP. The border is often described as the world's last Cold War frontier. Some 660,000 South Korean troops and 28,000 US troops are deployed in the South to counter the potential threat from the North's 1.1 million-strong military. South Korea plans to reduce the number of troops to 500,000 by 2020.

• The United States must step up work with Asian allies and regional powers to be ready to cope with sudden change in nuclear-armed North Korea, the Council on Foreign Relations warned on Tuesday (27 Jan). The Council on Foreign Relations said that although North Korea defied predictions in the 1990s that it would collapse after the death of its founder, economic meltdown and a deadly famine, the state remains weak and vulnerable.