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North Korea has declared it is indefinitely suspending participation in six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program. With a Foreign Ministry statement also announcing that Pyongyang has built nuclear weapons for ¡°self-defense¡±, the North Korean nuclear crisis has come to yet another head.
Many believed that North Korea already had nuclear weapons - and the North Korean authorities had been hinting at it themselves. But this is the first time that North Korea has said in an official statement, ¡°We made nuclear weapons.¡± We shall have to watch closely whether that is a real admission or simply typical of the Stalinist country¡¯s brinkmanship in attempting to ratchet up the tension with the United States. While North Korea strikes an attitude in which it appears unafraid of head-on confrontation with the international community, the U.S. response, too, is guaranteed to change. With it, the threat grows that the entire Korean Peninsula will be sucked into a vortex.
North Korea claims it is refusing to participate in the talks because U.S. policy toward Pyongyang remains hostile. It believes the Bush administration is refusing to acknowledge the North Korean regime. But in his inauguration address, U.S. President Bush restrained himself as much as possible from criticizing the North Korean regime, and stressed his resolve to settle the nuclear issue diplomatically. In the wake of the address, hopes ran high that the talks would restart, and the nations involved were getting busy. Thursday¡¯s declaration has turned the expectations of the international community on their head.
North Korea must awaken from the self-induced trance where it believes it can gain something only when it takes on the international community head-on. When the other side can read your cards so clearly, an attachment to the strategies of the past could mean that the situation spirals out of control ? with Pyongyang itself the ultimate victim.
Pyongyang has to understand that in the eyes of the international community it is becoming the little boy who cried wolf. Meanwhile one has to be suspicious whether the South Korean government, so optimistic that the six-party talks would restart right up to the moment when North Korea made its latest announcement, is properly reading the thoughts of the Northern authorities.
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