The US and Japan said there must be real progress when talks on scrapping North Korea's nuclear arms resume this week, warning Pyongyang that only sanctions and isolation lie down the other "fork in the road."
Analysts and officials hold out little hope of a major breakthrough, however, for the negotiations set to formally reopen today.
The talks are between North and South Korea, the US, Japan, Russia and host country China after a gap in negotiations of more than a year.
"I hope the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] understands that we really are reaching a fork in the road," Hill told reporters in Beijing yesterday.
"We can either go forward on the diplomatic track or we have to go to a much different track, and that is a track that involves sanctions and that I think ultimately will really be very harmful to the DPRK economy," he said.
For his part, North Korea's envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, urged an end to what he called Washington's hostility towards it.
On his arrival in Beijing on Saturday, Kim also demanded an end to US financial restrictions against it.
The demand is a prerequisite to progress on measures agreed in six-party accords in September of last year.
Hill indicated that Washington was prepared to deal on the issue of financial restrictions.
A separate delegation from the US Treasury Department would also be meeting the North Koreans in Beijing this week, he said.
But both Hill and Japan's envoy, Kenichiro Sasae, said that the focus of the negotiations should be on taking steps to implement the agreement that had already been inked last September.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang has urged Tokyo to investigate the alleged kidnapping of a North Korean by Japan decades ago.
The request has turned the tables in the usual situation.
Japan has long been pressing North Korea for similar information about Japanese citizens it says the North abducted.
The North's Red Cross Society said that Kim Thae-yong, a North Korean linguist at a college on Russia's Sakhalin Island, went missing in 1991 and was presumed to have been abducted by Japan, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The North's Red Cross Society in May asked its Japanese counterpart to help find the linguist, but Japan replied early this month that it had failed to determine his whereabouts, KCNA said in a commentary on Saturday.
KCNA expressed deep regret over Japan's attitude and said that its Red Cross Society did not explain a letter, which the agency claims Kim wrote to the North's Education Commission from Hokkaido, four months after his alleged abduction.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not