The North Korean nuclear issue seems to have entered a new phase. North Korea and the United States have been moving fast since they agreed on preliminary steps for Pyongyang’s denuclearization during their third round of high-level talks late last month. Attention is now drawn to a series of contacts between chief nuclear envoys from the two Koreas and the U.S. in New York, which started on Wednesday, March 7th. North Korea’s senior representative to the six-party talks and vice foreign minister Ri Yong-ho is visiting the U.S. to attend a seminar hosted by Syracuse University. South Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Lim Sung-nam is also participating in the seminar. After the seminar, Ri reportedly plans to attend a meeting of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Professor Yu Ho-yeol of the North Korean Studies Department at Korea University says the series of meetings will be a venue where Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington get together to exchange opinions about preliminary denuclearization measures and the resumption of the six-party talks. Professor Yu also says the meetings will provide some clue as to what North Korea has in mind.

While North Korea and the U.S. reached a breakthrough on key issues during the third round of high-level talks, South and North Korea have yet to restore dialogue or improve bilateral ties, even though the two sides held two rounds of meetings of chief representatives to the six-party talks. As the nuclear negotiators from the two Koreas participated in the Syracuse seminar together, they had an opportunity to engage in dialogue again. Although the seminar was held behind the scenes, it was an opportunity for the South Korean delegation to figure out what North Korea actually has in mind in regards to its nuclear policy under the Kim Jong-un regime and its relations with foreign countries, including the U.S.

As North Korea and the U.S. have started discussing details about the preliminary denuclearization steps in earnest, discussions for resumption of the six-party talks are expected to start soon, more than three years after the multilateral negotiations were suspended in December 2008. Of course, Pyongyang and Washington will still have to coordinate specifics about exactly how to halt North Korea’s uranium enrichment program, when the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency will return to North Korea, how extensive the inspection will be and how much and when Washington will provide nutritional assistance to the North. There is an increasing possibility that the six-party talks may reconvene at an early date due to political situations in South Korea, North Korea and the U.S.

North Korea, China, the U.S. and South Korea have important political schedules until April. In the U.S., the Republican Party’s selection of presidential candidates will continue through early April, and South Korea will hold parliamentary elections in April. Also, a massive national event will take place in North Korea on April 15th. If the six-party talks resume in the first half of the year after the major events are over in each country, the involved countries will be able to concentrate on the negotiations. If the six-party talks do not take place during the first half of the year, the negotiations are unlikely to be realized this year due to the presidential elections in South Korea and in the U.S. South Korea, North Korea and the U.S. have so far held dialogue for the resumption of the six-party talks. If they reached some sort of agreement, I imagine they will make efforts to resume the negotiations within the first half of the year.

North Korea said on February 29th that the U.S. and the North had agreed to discuss the lifting of sanctions against the North and the provision of light water reactors once the six-party talks resume. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said this when he exchanged questions and answers with a reporter from the North Korean Central News Agency and briefed him on the result of the high-level talks with the U.S. that were held on February 23rd and 24th. With the South Korean government’s punitive measures on North Korea still remaining in place, North Korea’s claim that it would discuss the lifting of sanctions at the six-party talks will likely stir controversy. The United Nations passed Resolution 1718, which contained tough sanctions on North Korea, right after North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006. In the wake of Pyongyang’s second nuclear test in May 2009, the U.N. adopted Resolution 1874, involving even tougher sanctions and the establishment of an expert panel. The provision of light water reactors could also emerge as an international concern. The reactors had been constructed under the 1994 Geneva agreement signed by North Korea and the U.S., but the construction came to a halt after North Korea’s highly enriched uranium program became an issue in 2002. So, why did North Korea reveal its wish list even before the resumption of the six-party talks is decided?

It could be a kind of strategy to set the discussion agenda first by proposing what North Korea is demanding or hoping for. North Korea claims that it is a nuclear power. In the same context, the North may demand that the U.S. provide light water nuclear reactors because Pyongyang will suspend the development of nuclear energy based on enriched uranium. North Korea could also argue that its plutonium-based nuclear program should be discussed separately. If the North sticks to this strategy, the six-party talks will come to a standstill again. If North Korea asks for the provision of light water reactors in return for renouncing all its nuclear programs, the demand could be accepted, to a certain extent, only after North Korea actually denuclearizes. Even if Pyongyang hopes and requests the provision of light water reactors, involved countries cannot repeat the previous experience of wasting a considerable amount of money on the construction of such reactors. Pyongyang’s demand requires careful coordination.

What grabs our attention the most is whether the inter-Korean contact in New York will pave the way for South and North Korea to jumpstart bilateral dialogue, which has been deadlocked since the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in 2010. As the top nuclear envoys from the two sides are participating in the seminar in New York, which is being held from Wednesday to Friday, the government is considering ways to realize an official meeting between the negotiators during this period. South and North Korea held their first and second round of denuclearization talks in Bali, Indonesia last July, and in Beijing last October, respectively. Each meeting was followed by North Korea-U.S. dialogue. But the third round of North Korea-U.S. talks took place last month without any inter-Korean talks, since North Korea rejected a meeting with Seoul. But Professor Yu predicts that Pyongyang will show a positive attitude this time around because the U.S. demands an improvement in inter-Korean relations. And North Korea, for its part, seeks to obtain what it wants.

North Korea has been stepping up criticism of South Korea, especially the Lee Myung-bak government. Pyongyang rejects any inter-Korean dialogue and strengthens its unilateral verbal offensive against the Seoul government for various reasons, including the combined Key Resolve military exercise between South Korea and the U.S., domestic politics of South Korea ahead of the general elections, the urgent need to achieve internal unity in North Korea and the need to secure legitimacy of dialogue with the U.S. So, it remains to be seen whether North Korea actually agrees on inter-Korean talks. But I think the North will have no choice but to engage in dialogue, because it cannot gain what it wants unless inter-Koran dialogue is restored, even at a rudimentary level.


[Interview] International Development NGO Provides Medical Service for NK Defectors
On a Sunday afternoon of February 26th, doctors and nurses are busy treating North Korean patients at a small, partitioned clinic installed at the North Korean Refugee Independence Support Center, located in the Yangcheon District of western Seoul. It’s Sunday, but the medical staff are eager to attend to patients there. The medical service is organized by “Good People,” an international development NGO dedicated to assisting North Korean defectors in their resettlement here in South Korea. For the campaign entitled “Medical Service of Love,” doctors and nurses volunteer to treat patients every week. Here’s Yun Hyeon-gi, the dean of the Free Citizens College, an educational institute founded by Good People with the purpose of educating North Korean defectors, to explain more about the campaign.

Today’s medical service is the result of the medical support program that has been conducted by Good People for the last 14 years and by cooperation from the Free Citizens College. Its purpose is to comfort the weary bodies and souls of North Korean defectors who risked their lives to escape their home country and came to South Korea, only to find difficulties due to economic and cultural differences. Many North Korean newcomers cannot receive medical benefits because they are isolated from South Korean society and failed to achieve financial independence. But here, the newcomers can see physicians, eye doctors and dentists, and get an ultrasound or a bone density test free of charge.

Since 1998, Good People has held 1,099 sessions of “Medical Service of Love” for underprivileged people, such as solitary senior citizens living in remote areas, foreign migrant workers and North Korean newcomers. The North Korean expatriates, in particular, often let their disease deteriorate as they had seldom received proper medical treatment in their home country. It is said that most of the North Korean patients suffer from diseases or psychological stress that they had developed in the process of escaping from North Korea.

Many North Korean patients suffer from chronic back pain and a bad toothache. It seems like medical facilities in North Korea are a lot poorer than those in the South in many ways. When asked about back pain, the patients said they did laborious work too often in North Korea, such as gathering firewood in the hills and carrying heavy things. In general, North Korean newcomers are in poor health. They aren’t very strong physically. I think their poor health has to do with nutrition. They had been under a lot of stress and tension before coming to South Korea. After arriving here, it seems their tension has melted away, which causes disease in many cases.

Many patients need to get consistent treatment, and Good People is planning on follow-up measures to link them to relevant clinics, if necessary. The patients express their deepest gratitude for the thoughtful consideration, saying they came here to receive physical treatments, but that they’ve found emotional comfort as well. Obviously, Good People’s medical service helps heal the physical and mental scars of North Korean newcomers who have started a new life here in South Korea. We hope the campaign will provide heartfelt medical service to many more North Korean defectors, bringing South and North Korea together as one.