By Anna Fifield in Seoul Published: February 20 2008 07:40 | Last updated: February 20 2008 07:40 Diplomats are this week again making new efforts to breathe some life into the roller-coaster six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
It is a year ago this month since the six parties agreed a deal that was supposed to pave the way to denuclearisation – an agreement under which Pyongyang pledged to provide a complete list of its nuclear programmes within 60 days of the agreement.
Twelve months on, and six weeks past the second deadline, the list has still not materialised.
In Seoul on Wednesday, Christopher Hill, the US’s chief negotiator at the talks, said that Mr Kim insisted that North Korea was not currently co-operating with any other countries on nuclear technology, and again denied the existence of a uranium enrichment programme.
But Mr Hill said that this did not meet the requirements for the ”complete and correct declaration” that was promised at the six-party talks.
”We cannot pretend that activities don’t exist when we know that the activities have existed,” Mr Hill told reporters in Seoul.
North Korea’s refusal to keep its end of the deal has led those in Washington who oppose to Mr Hill’s efforts to talk with North Korea to raise their voices again.
But the mood in South Korea is fast changing too. Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who will take office as the president of South Korea on Monday, has vowed to get tough with North Korea, demanding progress on the nuclear issue in return for economic development.
This will be a distinct change from the last decade, when the left-wing presidents Kim Dae-jung and then Roh Moo-hyun erred on the side of caution when dealing with Pyongyang. As they sought to engage Kim Jong-il’s regime, both men’s governments demurred from doing anything to antagonise Pyongyang, believing engagement would win trust.
”As far as subsidised economic transactions are concerned, they are probably going to be reduced or cut-off,” says Daniel Pinkston, Korea analyst at the International Crisis Group. ”There is going to be much greater scrutiny from now on. South Korean aid is no longer a foregone conclusion.”
Now, in the dying days of the Roh administration, the extent to which the president’s government turned a blind eye to North Korea’s wrongdoings – and to which Pyongyang has taken advantage of Seoul – is becoming clear.
South Korean border guards have seen North Korean units unloading southern rice aid at military posts along the heavily fortified land border on at least 10 occasions since 2003, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported last week.
Government officials later confirmed the reports and said the military had passed the information to relevant agencies.
Seoul is one of the biggest donors of rice to North Korea, but has been criticised for not checking to see that its aid is distributed to the country’s most needy, unlike international organisations.
Humanitarian workers and analysts have always harboured fears that the aid could be diverted to the military, but this is the first concrete evidence of it happening.
Separately, it has emerged that the $400,000 in cash that Seoul hand-delivered to Pyongyang last year to build a video reunion centre for families separated by the Korean War has disappeared.
The unification ministry said this month that it had asked North Korea in five meetings since April 2007 to provide details on how it spent the money, but the North did not respond.
The South gave the North an additional $3.4m worth of goods – including building materials, 10 buses and six SUVs – for the centre, which was meant to be built at the Kumgangsan resort on the Northern side of the countries’ border. But a year on, North Korea has not even started construction.
Mr Lee, the incoming South Korean president, has pledged to take a tougher line on North Korea, saying he would take a carrot-and-stick approach, demanding more reciprocity from Pyongyang than Seoul’s current left-wing leadership has expected.
Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert who has been advising Mr Lee, suggested that the new administration would halt all aid to North Korea, except emergency humanitarian assistance, unless Pyongyang made better progress towards denuclearisation.
”Lee Myung-bak does not feel obliged to support their requests for more rice and fertiliser,” Mr Nam said. ”North Korea will have to show a more friendly stance. For example, they will have to release some prisoners of war and some of the [South Korean] people they have kidnapped.”
