Korean Six-Party Hopes

Updated: February 8, 2007
Prepared by:
Carin Zissis

The New Year has brought cautious optimism about the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, which resumed Thursday in Beijing (BBC). Up until last month, the talks seemed to hold little hope of offering resolution to the standstill over the North’s nuclear weapons program. The negotiations stalled for more than a year after Pyongyang walked away from the talks, held with China, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. Beijing brought North Korea back on board, but only after Pyongyang joined the nuclear club with its October 2006 test. Christopher Hill, the U.S. State Department’s chief negotiator, left the last Six-Party round in December “disappointed” over the lack of progress. This new CFR.org Crisis Guide offers an in-depth look at the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

In an interview with Bernard Gwertzman, CFR Director of Studies Gary Samore says Hill was recently “given more negotiating flexibility than he previously enjoyed.” The Bush administration eased up on its hard-line stance of refusing to hold the bilateral talks Pyongyang has long demanded when Hill met with his North Korean counterpart last month in Berlin. Samore says in the February round of Six-Party Talks, Hill will be able to negotiate for “an interim step rather than going directly to full disarmament.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner says the United States should ask for nothing less than full dismantlement, saying, “Talking is not success, and North Korea should not be rewarded for its intransigence or its noncompliance with U.N. resolutions.” Each meeting round in Beijing “provides perfect international diplomatic cover for an unobstructed North Korean nuclear arms buildup,” writes the American Enterprise Institute's Nicholas Eberstadt, who calls the negotiations a “farce.”

Ahead of the talks, Hill admitted he did not expect to achieve full denuclearization, but that “we have a basis for making progress at this round” toward implementing the Six-Party September 2005 agreement. Under its terms, North Korea would suspend its nuclear program and allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for humanitarian aid. The fact that President Bush’s fiscal year 2008 budget request (PDF) includes $2 million in aid for North Korea, the first such aid request since 2005, may also signal a more open approach from Washington.

Pyongyang also shows signs of interest in complying with the September 2005 agreement, but may want more than a modest aid package. Former U.S. State Department official Joel Wit, who visited Pyongyang last week, told Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun that North Korea says it will freeze operations at its nuclear facilities, including Yongbyon―the largest, in exchange for five hundred thousand tons of fuel oil and a U.S. promise to lift financial sanctions targeting North Korean accounts in Macau. The last issue has been a sticking point between the two countries: Washington accuses Pyongyang of money laundering counterfeit dollars in the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia. This Congressional Research Service report (PDF) details evidence of North Korea’s counterfeiting activities. Recent U.S.-North Korea financial talks failed to resolve (AP) the disagreement over Washington’s financial restrictions, although officials doubted the impasse would stall progress at the Six-Party Talks.

Korean Six-Party Hopes - Council on Foreign Relations