North Korea’s inexperienced young leader, Kim Jong-un, has taken his first big step on the international stage by doing a deal with the US little more than two months after the death of his father in a move that will help establish his credibility.
The reclusive state agreed to suspend nuclear tests, halt long-range missile launches and enrichment of uranium at a nuclear facility and allow back nuclear inspectors, completing a key piece of business left unfinished by the death in December last year of Kim Jong-il, who ruled the impoverished state for 17 years.
Wednesday’s announcement by Washington and Pyongyang will likely see aid for disarmament talks resume. However, few believe Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, has any intention of abandoning the nuclear aspirations that came to define his father’s rule and were the one bit of leverage he had with the outside world, in particular the US.
“In the long run, they hope to make a deal about arms restriction, as opposed to disarmament,” Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul said.
“They are willing to freeze their nuclear program, if they are paid a hefty fee, and explicitly or implicitly allowed to keep some stockpiles of plutonium and/or nuclear devices,” Lankov said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dubbed the decision to a “modest first step.”
The deal with Washington, that also involved consultations with China, the North’s main backer, and Russia, continues a pattern by Pyongyang of playing off regional powers and a policy of seeking to isolate South Korea from its ally in Washington.
The deal came at the height of joint military drills by US and South Korean forces aimed at deterring aggression by the North, a regular occasion for Pyongyang to unleash vitriolic rhetoric against Washington.
South Korean media said that Seoul appeared to have become alienated from its close ally and questioned how committed Washington still was to a demand that relations between the two Koreas, who remain technically at war, improve before broader regional talks can resume.
“The diplomatic loser here is of course [South Korean] President Lee Myung-bak,” John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul said. “Inter-Korean issues have been cleanly separated from nuclear negotiations.”
Although the agreement between Pyongyang and Washington included some food aid, the driving factor was North Korea’s long-standing goal to “normalize” relations with the US and to establish Kim Jong-un’s credibility as head of the family dynasty that has led North Korea since it was founded.
“I don’t think the need for food aid is driving this. In fact, I suspect food aid is a decoy,” Delury said.
The North has suffered chronic food shortages for two decades.
The agreement calls for the US shipment of 240,000 tonnes of “nutritional assistance” to the North, which excludes rice or other staples that Washington and Seoul believe could be diverted away from needy civilians and stored for troops.
Meanwhile, as Associated Press report said that in another sign of warming relations between two wartime foes, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho would attend a security conference in the US.
Ri, who is also the North’s envoy to nuclear disarmament negotiations, has been cleared to travel to the US to attend the forum at Syracuse University, according to the person with knowledge of the arrangement.
A second person with information about Ri’s itinerary also said the envoy would be attending the Syracuse forum.
Both spoke on condition of anonymity because Ri’s travel plans have not been formally announced.
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