Korean Peninsula Today, 29 July 2009

Today’s highlights:
1) A US State Department official stated that North Korean call for dialogue fails to meet the international demand for resumption of Six-Party Talks
2) A South Korea-based North Korean defector-run media outlet reported 34 people are either dead or missing in Yangkang Province in North Korea due to the recent monsoon
3) The World Food Program documents showed that the food aid in North Korea is providing limited rations only to 1.3 million people instead of the originally targeted 6.2 million
4) China seized of 154 lbs of strategic metal shipment at the border bound for North Korea, which could be used for missile enhancement
and 5) The Korean Sharing Movement stated that it is expecting a delay for the planned visit to Pyongyang due to lack of formal invitation by the North

NKorean call for dialogue 'fails to meet' demands: US (AFP)

Washington – North Korea's call for dialogue "fails to meet" demands it return to nuclear disarmament negotiations with the United States and four other countries, a senior US official said Monday, AFP reports.

North Korea's foreign ministry said there was a "specific and reserved form of dialogue" that Pyongyang would entertain over the nuclear impasse, in what observers said was a direct overture to the United States.

But a senior State Department official told AFP the statement "fails to meet" US and international demands for North Korea to resume disarmament talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

"We have a (six-party) framework and the North Koreans need to recommit to denuclearization through that framework and implement their obligations," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United States has repeatedly refused to sidestep the multilateral negotiations and insisted there is no chance of direct talks.

North Korea's foreign ministry Monday again dismissed the forum.

"Any attempt to side with those who claim the resumption of the six-party talks without grasping the essence of the matter will not help ease tension," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by state media.

"There is a specific and reserved form of dialogue that can address the current situation."

The spokesman did not elaborate on what form such a dialogue could take.

"What Pyongyang calls for is a direct US-North Korean dialogue," said Kim Yong-Hyun, a North Korea expert and professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.

The North quit the six-party talks after the United Nations Security Council censured it for a long-range rocket launch in April. In May, it also staged its second nuclear test, further ratcheting up tension.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, referring to longstanding policy, told reporters the United States is "open to a bilateral dialogue, but only in the context of the six-party talks, only in a multilateral context."

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34 Dead in Yangkang Province Flooding (Daily NK)

Changchun, China – Torrential rains which recently hit Haesan, Yangang Province in North Korea apparently resulted in 34 dead or missing persons and 41 homes being swept away in the waves.

An inside source in Yangang Province told The DailyNK by phone on the 24th, "Many residential homes gave way and many casualties resulted from the downpour. The employees of factories and enterprises have been mobilized to work on recovery projects, but this will most likely take a long time."

The source said, "Due to the rainfall, Yeonbongdong, Tapsungdong and Haehwadong were flooded, and 41 single-story homes collapsed. The number of deceased or missing people has reached 34. Usually, two or three households, four or five in some cases, occupy each residence, so at least 100 families have experienced some kind of damage."

He explained the weather that caused the tragedy, "Rain started falling, but it stopped early on the morning of the 11th. But then it really began to pour between two and three in the afternoon. Thumbnail-sized hailstones started coming down, then falling in buckets."

"The victims of the downpour were mostly elderly people staying at home, children and some who were lost in the current while trying to salvage their belongings. If the rain had fallen at night instead of during the day, I do not know what kind of a tragedy might have resulted."

The flooding was mostly in Yeonbongdong, as well as Haehwadong and Haeheungdong. By comparison, Masan and its surrounding region were less seriously affected, and the areas around Hwajeonri and Kumsandong experienced hardly any damage at all.

The reason for Yeonbongdong and Haehwadong being so seriously affected seems to have been the construction of a road on top of a stream which flows in front of the Kim Jong Suk College of Education.

"The citizens in Yeongbongdong have actually been concerned about possible rainfall damage since the building of the road over the water," the source reported, claiming that the calamity was not simply a flood disaster, but a man-made one.

Currently, the roads in the Yeonbongdong area have completely been destroyed, forcing all vehicles to take a detour. Even middle school students have been mobilized to dig and carry the clay and sand to fill the roads.

The source relayed news that the North Korean authorities are allowing those households whose homes collapsed in the downpour to temporarily stay in surrounding factory buildings, and have begun recovery projects including repairs to damaged roads. Those citizens who have been mobilized for these projects have apparently been facing substantial hardships such as having to carry mud on their backs.

The source relayed the local atmosphere, commenting, "No national policy has been implemented to deal with the flood damage. Without bearing any of the responsibility as a state, North Korea has just put pressure on the citizens."

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Questions Are Raised About Who Profits from UN Aid to North Korea (Fox News)

Is North Korea's dictatorial regime quietly profiting from U.N. emergency food supplies delivered to its starving people, even as the regime squeezes those deliveries down to a trickle?

Documents produced by the World Food Program, the U.N.'s flagship relief agency, outlining its current emergency operations in the insular communist state, raise a number of touchy questions about the financing and logistics of the effort, which was originally intended to feed some 6.2 million of North Korea's most vulnerable people, but which is currently providing limited rations only to 1.33 million.

The $500 million program was meant to run from September, 1, 2008 to November 31, 2009, to deliver nearly 630,000 tons of food aid to North Korea at a time when it is suffering from severe flood damage and fertilizer shortages that have led to local food price increases.

Currently, WFP says that only $75.4 million worth of food aid has been delivered under the emergency program, as international donors have recoiled at the Kim Jong Il regime's recent nuclear detonation and provocative missile launchings toward Japan and Hawaii.

WFP emergency relief program documents obtained by FOX News show that from the outset the food agency planned to pay extraordinarily high transportation costs for sending relief supplies to North Korea from around the world--about a dollar for every two dollar's worth of food aid shipped into the country under the program.

Moreover, enormous sums were involved: $130,334,172 for “external transport” of 629,938 tons of grain and other food relief supplies for the overall program. (The food supplies themselves are projected to cost $297,396,729.)

For comparative purposes, the “external” shipping costs planned by WFP for the aid program average about $206.90 per metric ton of food aid.

Click here to view the PDF version of WFP's planned cost for food aid and transportation to North Korea: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/WFP_NK_cost_breakdown.pdf

Those rates were described as “absolutely ridiculous” by an expert on bulk shipping consulted by FOX News, even for sending goods by international shipping carriers to the remote region that includes North Korea. Another international grain expert consulted by FOX News described them as “way out of line” with past and present international shipping rates for bulk grain and other basic food commodities.

What WFP has not revealed in its documentation until questioned by FOX News, however, is that a substantial, but unspecified, amount of that money is intended to move the emergency aid from China to its final North Korean destination via shipping firms owned by the Kim Jong Il government.

Nowhere in the WFP program documents, which appeared on WFP's public website only after Fox News began raising questions about them, is there any mention of the North Korean hipping involvement.

Click here to view the WFP’s entire North Korean Emergency Assistance program document: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/WFP_NK_plan.pdf

Even though WFP has not revealed how much of the $130-plus million in planned “external transport” money Kim Jong Il's shipping firms are in line to receive, an analysis of the current costs involved in getting such supplies to their second-last destination reveal that the amount slated to pay for the last leg of the journey to North Korea could be huge.

A WFP spokesman blamed the overall high cost on “ the remote geographical location of [North Korea] from place of procurement (normally Black Seas, South Africa and South America).”

All WFP food aid, he added, was first shipped to the northern Chinese port of Dalian, before moving on to the North Korean port of Nampo.

But the spokesman then added that high costs were also due to “the lack of competition of transporters for transshipment” between Dalian and Nampo.

In fact, shipments to and from Dalian, China, one of the major centers of China's huge export sector, are commonplace and hardly expensive by international standards. Data kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, shows that grain shipments from Brazil to China between April and June of this year have varied from $32.50 to $42 per metric ton.

Moreover, those international shipping rates have been on a precipitous downward slide since June, 2008-three months before the WFP aid program began. Even allowing for higher rates from the Black Sea and South Africa, international shipping experts told FOX News that the rates would come nowhere near $206 per ton-especially as there is currently a surplus of international shipping capacity.

The same, however, apparently can't be said of transport between Dalian and Nampo-a distance of 210 nautical miles.

There, the WFP spokesman said, WFP relies entirely on “feeder vessels belonging to the [North Korean] government.”

Asked late last week by FOX News to provide specifics of the rates charged by North Korean vessels for carrying international food aid home, the WFP spokesman did not provide an answer before this article was published.

However much the Kim Jong Il regime charges for bringing food to its people, it is not the only money that WFP provides to Kim for humanitarian assistance.

The WFP documents show that the government was to receive an additional projected $5,039,504 as a transport fuel subsidy if the relief program gets back into full swing. The “fuel reimbursement levy” amounts to $8 per ton of aid delivered, and according to the WFP spokesman, is normally not provided to countries that receive food aid-they are expected to chip in for this cost on their own--except under a waiver that North Korea has been granted.

So far, the Kim regime's National Coordinating Committee, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has received $1.16 million under this waiver since September 2008, with the promise of an additional $361,400 to come. The WFP spokesman emphasized that the money was not paid in hard currency.

The same apparently applies to $4,409,566 intended by WFP to enhance a “capacity building strategy of government counterparts” envisaged in the relief plan. According to the WFP spokesman, this means management training and information systems upgrades for the Kim government to handle the new food aid. WFP is also paying for warehouses and equipment to handle the aid. So far, the regime has only $103,200 of the projected total, with another $155,000 committed.

Amid all the fuzzy math of the WFP relief program, there is a final quirk: the inexplicably high transportation costs work to the benefit not only of the Kim regime, but also to the benefit of WFP.

As a matter of standard practice, WFP charges a standard 7% management fee against “direct operational costs” of such relief efforts to support its worldwide operations, over and above the costs it incurs in the specific relief exercise. These, in WFP-speak, are known as the organization's “indirect support costs.”

Based on direct operational costs in North Korea of $445,033,971-including the $133.3 million in “external transport” costs-- WFP expected to reap $32,948,811 as its 7% share of “indirect support costs.”

Its 7% “indirect support” levy on the extraordinary $130.3 million transport bill would amount to about $9.1 million.

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China seizes smuggled metal bound for North Korea (Reuters)

BEIJING – Chinese border police have seized 70 kg (154 lb) of the strategic metal vanadium bound for North Korea, a local newspaper said on Tuesday, foiling an attempt to smuggle a material used to make missile parts.

The U.N. Security Council has tightened restrictions on North Korea in response to its May 25 nuclear test. The sanctions are meant to cut off the North's arms trade.

Although the seizure is in line with China's own export controls, Chinese analysts had predicted Beijing would step up inspections on road and rail traffic into North Korea to help enforce the tightened sanctions.

Altogether 68 bottles totaling 70 kg of vanadium worth 200,000 yuan ($29,280) were seized at the Dandong border with North Korea, the Dandong News said.

"Customs agents at the Dandong border crossing inspect six boxes of the rare metal vanadium found hidden under boxes of fruit in a truck stopped during border checks," the newspaper said in a front-page caption of a photo dated July 24.

Vanadium is a metal that strengthens steel and protects against rust. It is alloyed with steel to make missile casings, as well as high speed tools, superconducting magnets and jet engines.

China restricts the export of vanadium and other minor metals as part of a domestic policy meant to preserve strategic metals, encourage investment in processing industries and control international price fluctuations.

On Monday the chief executive of a Japan-based trading company pleaded guilty in a Japanese court to illegally exporting to North Korea two tanker trucks that could be used as missile launch pads, the Kyodo news agency said.

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Aid group's Pyongyang visit likely to be postponed (Yonhap)

SEOUL – A South Korean lawmaker and a group of civic aid officials' planned visit to Pyongyang for talks on humanitarian aid will likely be postponed due to an apparent breakdown of communications over protocol regarding cross-border entry, officials said Tuesday [28 July]

Rep. Chung Eui-hwa of the ruling Grand National Party, who also serves as joint head of the Korea Sharing Movement (KSM), a civic aid group, has requested government permission to make a four-day visit to Pyongyang starting Wednesday to meet with officials of the North's Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation (KCRC) to discuss medical and other humanitarian support projects.

The scheduled trip, which the government was largely expected to approve, however, will likely be canceled or postponed as the KCRC has not sent an official invitation to Chung and the civic group officials. The two sides have initially agreed to conduct the meetings, according to officials.

"We're not exactly sure why the North hasn't sent us the invitation. Normally invitations for these kind of talks are delivered a day or two before the set date," one of Chung's aides said.

Kang Young-sik, secretary general of the KSM, also expected a postponement of the visit.

"We've requested the invitation for the visit, which was discussed beforehand. We've received no reply and are not sure of the reason," Kang told Yonhap News Agency.

The government has tentatively decided to authorize the visit by Chung and seven officials at the organization if the delegation is given an official invitation. It would likely mark Seoul's first approval of a visit by a non-government group to North Korea since Pyongyang carried out its second nuclear test on May 25.

Earlier requests by the KSM were rejected due to the state of inter-Korean relations, which have frayed in recent months following the North's nuclear and missile tests.

Korean Peninsula Today, 23 July 2009

U.S. willing to normalize ties with denuclearized N. Korea (Yonhap)

PHUKET – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday her government is willing to normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea if the communist nation scraps its nuclear arsenal in a "complete and irreversible" way.

"We have made it very clear to the North Koreans that if they will agree to irreversible denuclearization, the United States, as well as our partners, will move forward on a package of incentives and opportunities including normalizing relations," she said in a press conference after a series of meetings with Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and South Korean foreign ministers on this Thai resort island.

Top diplomats from 10 Southeast Asian countries and more than a dozen other members of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) will attend the meeting that opens Thursday.

Clinton's comments marked her clearest message yet to North Korea on what it will gain from a strategic decision to denuclearize and what it will lose in case of continued defiance.

Clinton said she and the foreign ministers from the four regional powers discussed "the need for vigorous, unified, and transparent implementation of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874," which imposes a set of trade embargoes and financial sanctions on Pyongyang for its nuclear test in May.

"We share a common goal of ending the nuclear weapons program in North Korea so that we can have a denuclearized peninsula," she said, adding that "complete and irreversible denuclearization is the only viable path for North Korea."

"It's tragic to look at what happens to the people of North Korea," she said, citing poverty, hunger, and the absence of opportunities. "We are very clear that are we willing to discuss the future of North Korea, but only if they agree to the denuclearization."

"The path is open to them, and it is up to them to follow it. Unless and until they do, they will face international isolation and the unrelenting pressure of global sanctions," she said.

Clinton emphasized that Washington will not reward North Korea just for returning to the table. "Nor do we intend to reward them for actions they have already committed to taking and then reneged on," she said.

The North has repeatedly taken provocative steps after receiving economic and political rewards for individual steps toward denuclearization, including the disabling of its main plutonium-producing reactor in Yongbyon. The North announced after a long-range rocket launch in April that it will restart the reactor and abandon the six-way disarmament talks.

"We want verifiable and irreversible steps taken," she said. In her 25-minute talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan [Yu Myo'ng-hwan], meanwhile, the secretary expressed hopes for the safe and early return of their nationals detained in North Korea during the talks, according to Yu's aides.

Yu first raised the issue of the South Korean worker taken into custody at the joint industrial park in Kaesong [Kaeso'ng], according to ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young. He has been detained in North Korea incommunicado since being arrested in late March on charges of criticizing the North's political system and trying to lure a North Korean female worker to defect to the South.

Washington is also trying to win the release of two American journalists detained in the secretive North.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee of the U.S. Internet news outlet Current TV were arrested in mid-March near the China-North Korea border while reporting on North Korean defectors. They were convicted of unspecified "great crimes" and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

Yu and Clinton agreed that the humanitarian issue should be handled separately from the nuclear issue, Moon said.

A delegation of five North Korean officials is also on a trip here to attend the ARF. The North has not dispatched its foreign minister, however, dashing hopes of a high-level meeting between Pyongyang and Washington.

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SPA Presidium Issues Decree Establishing New Ministry (KCNA)

Pyongyang – The Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly issued a decree on setting up the Ministry of Foodstuff and Daily Necessities Industry on July 22.

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Clinton Cites Concerns of Arms Aid to Myanmar (New York Times)

BANGKOK – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Thailand for a meeting of Southeast Asian nations, expressed concern on Wednesday that North Korea was transferring nuclear technology to Myanmar, which she said could destabilize the region.

“It’s a threat to other of our allies,” Mrs. Clinton said during a town hall meeting here, “and it’s a threat to further destabilization of the region.” A day earlier, she said that expanded military ties between the countries would “pose a direct threat” to Myanmar’s neighbors. She singled out Thailand, the host of the regional security meeting, as being vulnerable to the reclusive and heavily armed dictatorship in Myanmar.

Suspicions about North Korea’s relationship with Myanmar deepened recently when a North Korean freighter appeared to be steaming toward Myanmar. American officials, believing the ship might be carrying weapons or other illicit cargo, tracked it until it reversed course.

North Korea is already suspected of supplying Myanmar with small-caliber weapons and ammunition, but some intelligence analysts contend that North Korea is also helping Myanmar pursue a nuclear weapons program. They cite as possible evidence newly published photos of what some analysts say is a network of giant tunnels outside Myanmar’s jungle capital, Naypyidaw, built with help from North Korean engineers.

“North Korea has been a notorious proliferator of nuclear technology,” Mrs. Clinton said on Wednesday.

Even without these links, Myanmar and North Korea are likely to dominate the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, which begins Wednesday on the resort island of Phuket.

Mrs. Clinton plans to meet with the foreign ministers of several countries to strengthen support for the latest United Nations resolution against North Korea, adopted after that country’s nuclear and missile tests.

Although the United States is putting most of its emphasis on enforcing the sanctions in that resolution, it has begun discussing possible incentives that the countries could offer North Korea, if its government agreed to abandon its nuclear ambitions and return to the bargaining table.

Officials declined to say what might be on the table, though they said it would be a mix of familiar and new elements. In the past, the United States and other countries have offered North Korea shipments of fuel.

“There are obviously a list of incentives, offers that could be made if the North Koreans evidence any willingness to take a different path,” Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference here, after arriving from New Delhi. “As of this moment in time, we haven’t seen that evidence.”

The administration’s decision to broach the possibility of incentives, officials said, will make it easier to persuade countries like China, which have previously resisted sanctions against North Korea, to agree to put into effect the tougher measures in the United Nations resolution.

North Korea is expected to send a delegate to the Asean conference, but Mrs. Clinton did not plan to meet that delegate. American officials said there was always the possibility of a chance encounter of a North Korean diplomat and one of Mrs. Clinton’s lieutenants on the sidelines.

Mrs. Clinton also has no plans to meet with a representative from Myanmar, formerly Burma. On Tuesday, she spoke in unusually detailed terms in discussing the country’s human rights record and its treatment of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi is on trial, accused of violating her house arrest by sheltering an American man who swam across a lake to her bungalow last May.

“We are deeply concerned by the reports of continuing human rights abuses within Burma,” she said, “and particularly by actions that are attributed to the Burmese military, concerning the mistreatment and abuse of young girls.”

The Obama administration has been reviewing American policy toward Myanmar since February, when Mrs. Clinton declared that the existing sanctions against its military-run government had been ineffective.

But the United States will not announce a new policy at this meeting, American officials said, largely because repeated delays in the trial of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi have made it difficult for the administration to develop a response. Mrs. Clinton repeated her demand that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi be treated fairly, and dismissed the charges against her as “baseless and totally unacceptable.”

“Our position is that we are willing to have a more productive partnership with Burma if they take steps that are self-evident,” she said.

She called on the government to release political prisoners and to “end the violence” against its own people, including ethnic minorities. In recent weeks, the military has carried out a fierce offensive against the Karen minority, driving refugees across the border into Thailand.

Chinese and American officials have pressed Myanmar to adhere to the anti-proliferation measures in the sanctions against North Korea, which it has pledged to do. Analysts say there is evidence, in the aborted voyage of the North Korean freighter, that the leaders got the message.

Without a new American policy to announce, however, the United States and Asian nations are unlikely to break much ground in trying to bring the generals who govern Myanmar back into the fold.

Appearing with Mrs. Clinton, one of Thailand’s deputy prime ministers, Korbsak Sabhavasu, said, “I think we basically almost just about share the same thoughts and ideas on how to solve this problem.”

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Cyprus seizes cigarette-laden North Korean ship (Associated Press)

NICOSIA, Cyprus – Cypriot authorities have seized a North Korean-registered cargo ship suspected of smuggling nearly a million packs of cigarettes to Egypt.

A court in Cyprus has ordered the detention of the Egyptian captain of the Prince T as well as a Lebanese and two Syrian crew members for eight days while authorities investigate. No charges have been filed.

Cyprus Customs Department official Niki Hadjiyianni said Wednesday the illegal cigarettes are estimated to have a street value of euro700,000 ($993,000).

A police patrol boat intercepted the ship Tuesday about 16 kilometers (10 miles) off eastern Cyprus after it had set sail from Famagusta in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north. The ship had been heading to Port Said in Egypt.

Korean Peninsula Today, 18 - 20 July 2009

Not too much happening (as far as number of activities are concerned) on the Korean peninsula over the weekend...for a change...

U.S. envoy urges N. Korea to reengage in dialogue (Yonahp)

SEOUL - A senior U.S envoy urged North Korea Saturday to take "serious and irreversible steps" to end its stand-off with the U.S. and other regional powers, saying it is a precondition for a "comprehensive package" of incentives.

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, also emphasized that it is important to have patience and keep the door open for dialogue with North Korea, while enforcing U.N. sanctions on the communist nation for its provocative actions.

"I would say at this juncture the most important quality that the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia can demonstrate is patience," he told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Yong-joon here. Campbell flew into South Korea from Japan earlier in the day for his first trip to South Korea since assuming the post last month.

He pointed out that U.S. officials have made clear that, "If North Korea is prepared to take serious and irreversible steps the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and others will be able to put together a comprehensive package that would be attractive to North Korea. But in this respect, North Korea really has to take some of the first steps."

All of the countries are participants in the six-way talks aimed at scrapping the North's nuclear program. The last formal session of the Beijing-based negotiations was held in December.

North Korea announced after a long-range rocket launch in April that it would quit the often-troubled talks. The North also conducted a second nuclear test in May, prompting the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution imposing a robust set of sanctions on it.

In the latest measure against the North, a U.N. Security Council committee imposed a travel ban on five North Korean officials and asset freezes on five more entities for their involvement in missile and nuclear weapons development.

"We believe there have to be consequences," Campbell said, citing the U.S. efforts to implement the resolution. "We're looking at a full range of particular steps designed to put pressure on North Korea."

He said sanctions are already proving to be effective. He said the recent turnback of a North Korean cargo ship, Kang Nam 1, is an example.

The Kang Nam 1 was suspected of carrying illegal weapons to be exported to probably Myanmar. After its voyage was closely monitored by the U.S. Navy for weeks, the ship reversed its course and returned to North Korea. The U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, adopted after the North's nuclear test on May 25, authorizes member countries to take measures to stop the North's arms trade by air, land, and sea.

Campbell said it sent a message to North Korea and "caused some pain to the leadership."

He said it is North Korea that should change its course as it has chosen "lies, greater tensions, greater hardship for its people, more isolation and a lack of engagement in the international economy."

On a proposed five-way meeting without North Korea, meanwhile, Campbell said it is unlikely to be held in the near future.

"I think the U.S. and South Korea have explored the option of a five-party meeting at some point. Preparations need to be taken for such a meeting. I'm not sure we'll be ready to do it in Phuket," he said. Some said that the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to be held in the Thai resort island next week may set the stage for such a five-way event. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterparts from South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia are scheduled to attend the ARF.

"But the U.S. and South Korea are busy coordinating our respective positions and ensure that all the members have an opportunity to interact, if not in a collective setting, then bilaterally in Thailand," he added.

South Korea supports such a five-way gathering for discussions on how to bring the North to the disarmament talks but China, which chairs the negotiations, takes a lukewarm stance apparently due to concerns that it will make the North Koreans feel more isolated and have a negative impact on the six-party format.

The U.S. official plans to hold a series of meetings with other top South Korean officials including Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, on Monday before heading to Thailand later in the day.

Campbell said he will "consult on a wide range of issues, particularly relating to North Korea to make sure of our common strategy."

His trip comes as the North shows no signs of bowing to the international pressure.

On Saturday, Pyongyang's official news agency KCNA belatedly reported comments by the country's number two leader Kim Yong-nam at the Non-Aligned Movement summit of 118 nations in Egypt earlier this week.

"Noting that not only the peace and security of the country but also the dignity of the nation and sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea) have been grossly violated by the high-handed acts of the U.S., Kim asserted that if such acts of the U.S. are allowed to go on, the DPRK would be totally deprived of the legitimate right to use space," the KCNA said, referring to the international condemnation of its failed satellite launch in April.

"The DPRK can never accept dialogue or negotiations minus the principle of respect for sovereignty and equal sovereignty," Kim was quoted as saying. "The prevailing situation compelled the DPRK government to take decisive steps to bolster up its nuclear deterrence."

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S. Korean defense chief reaffirms denuclearization of Korean Peninsula (Yonhap)

SEOUL - South Korea's defense minister on Sunday countered a claim by some conservatives here that the country should have nuclear weapons to deter nuclear-armed North Korea.

"The government has constantly pushed for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula since joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1975 and will continue to do so," Lee Sang-hee said in an interview with state-owned broadcaster KTV. "The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula should be maintained."

Some right-leaning politicians and other conservatives have called for Seoul to obtain "nuclear sovereignty" especially since the communist neighbor conducted a second nuclear test on May 25. Analysts said the underground experiment yielded a far more powerful explosion than the previous one in October 2006, indicating the North's nuclear weapons technology has improved significantly.

Pyongyang has made clear that it has no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons.

The defense minister also called for a cautious approach towards demands for the redeployment of the U.S. military's tactical nuclear weapons.

Washington withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from the peninsula in 1991.

"Some people say that nuclear weapons should be redeployed on the Korean Peninsula but we should think carefully about it," Lee said.

He pointed out that South Korea can thwart the North's nuclear provocations with the help of an "extended nuclear umbrella" provided by the U.S.

In his summit with President Lee Myung-bak in Washington last month, U.S. President Barack Obama reaffirmed in writing his country's commitment to providing an "extended nuclear umbrella" for South Korea in response to increasing nuclear threats from the North. It was the first time for the allies' leaders to make the commitment, though U.S. defense ministers have promised since 1978 to offer necessary nuclear deterrence capabilities to South Korea.

"One thing is certain," the defense chief said, "and that is that South Korea and the U.S. have the joint defense capability to deter North Korea and are in a position to win any war against it through our joint operation system."

He acknowledged that the North has 300 to 400 long-rang artillery missiles that are able to hit targets in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi Province, adding that all of them are buried in underground tunnels, but said the weapons would be rendered useless if the entrances to the tunnels are destroyed.

He also said that South Korea's K-9 self-propelled howitzer and multiple launch rocket launchers are aimed at North Korea's main military facilities, adding that "Pyongyang is only 150km away."

The remark alluded to the North's often repeated threat that "Seoul is only 50km away and it will be turned into ashes immediately in case of a war."

With regard to the timing of the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean troops from Washington, Lee said it should be implemented as scheduled on April 17, 2012.

South Korea handed over its military command to the U.S. shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. It regained peaceful OPCON in 1994.

Conservatives argue it is premature for South Korea to regain wartime OPCON.

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N.K. faces worst crisis since 1994 (Korea Herald)

North Korea faces the worst crisis in more than a decade since its founding father Kim Il-sung died in 1994, due to a protracted conflict with the international community over its nuclear ambitions, a report said Friday, according to Yonhap News.

The North will not have enough food to feed its people and its economy will decline in the second half of this year if Pyongyang fails to resolve the nuclear issue, according to the report by the Korea Development Institute, a South Korean state-run think tank.

The report comes amid growing tension on the Korean Peninsula following the North's second nuclear test in May, which drew condemnations and fresh sanctions from the U.N. Security Council.

Last year, the communist country also suspended cross-border tours to Mount Kumgang after a South Korean tourist was fatally shot by North Korean soldiers while vacationing there. She had wandered into a restricted area. The North also detained a South Korean worker at the troubled inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong in late March, accusing him of criticizing its political system.

"With all of these factors combined, the current difficulties confronting North Korea can be compared to conditions back in 1994, when Kim Il-sung died and a nuclear crisis was sparked" the KDI said in the report, which assesses trends in the communist country.

"In the past, the focus was on nuclear disarmament but now it has shifted to a head-on confrontation, with the North demanding it be recognized as a nuclear power and the other five countries (in the six-party talks) unwilling to tolerate the request," it added.

"It will be much more difficult to reach a breakthrough (than it was in 1994)."

Pyongyang has vowed to boycott the six-party talks -- which are aimed at denuclearizing North Korea, and also involve South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan -- in protest of the U.N. sanctions.

The KDI cited the renewed U.N. sanctions and strained inter-Korean relations as reasons for its bleak outlook for the North Korean economy in the second half. Uncertainties surrounding leader Kim Jong-il's health were also mentioned, amid rumors he has developed pancreatic cancer.

"The international community's sanctions will have the most immediate impact on the North Korean economy," the KDI said, adding that the chilled relations between Seoul and Pyongyang will also seriously affect its trade.

Despite reports of a good harvest in the North last year thanks to favorable weather conditions, the KDI worried that a food shortage would still impact many North Koreans "depending on their social status and where they live."

The KDI earlier predicted that the North's total grain production may reach around 4.29 million tons this year, which falls short of the minimum 5.13 million tons needed to feed its 20-plus million people.

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Military Eyes Lowering N.K. Watch Level amid No Signs of Threat (Yonhap)

SEOUL - South Korean and U.S. military officials are mulling over lowering the level of surveillance operations on North Korea amid no signs of an immediate military provocation by the communist country, military sources said Saturday.

Officials at the Combined Forces Command (CFC) said it was considering lowering the "watch condition" by a notch from the current second-highest level, as the latest military intelligence suggests no sign of an immediate threat by the North.

The CFC has maintained the current the level of intelligence collection and monitoring of North Korean military activities since raising "watchcon" to its second-highest level in late May, following North Korea's second nuclear test that was also followed by rounds of missile launches into the East Sea.

The CFC runs a five-stage watchcon. The third level calls for "attentive monitoring" of military activities in the North.

The official said that military officials from the two countries were consulting on the plan to lower watchcon. The plan is expected to be finalized early next week after Gen. Walter Sharp, head of the CFC, returns to South Korea from his trip to the U.S.

South and North Korea are technically in a state of war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

Pyongyang, whose relations with Seoul have rapidly unraveled over the past year, has warned of conflicts along their intensely guarded border.