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Rumors that North Korea will in June escalate its standoff with the U.S. are gaining ground. This is the fourth crisis rumor to go around since the nuclear dispute started up again in 2002. This one, however, is quite different from previous rumors. There are immediate signs that North Korea may be preparing for a nuclear test in Kilju, North Hamgyeong Province, with talk of a test coming not just from the U.S. but also from China and Japan. Most of it is pessimistic. "North Korea could conduct a nuclear test as early as June," a U.S. Defense Department official said, and during a meeting with Chinese officials over the weekend, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said the situation was at a "critical juncture." All agree that something is afoot.
¡ß Why June?
This started in March when Akitaka Saiki, Japan's representative to six-party nuclear disarmament talks, said if North Korea didn't rejoin the talks by June, the matter would go to the UN Security Council. At around the same time, South Korea's point man at the talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, said it would be strange for the talks to become an annual event. Song recently said June was only a "psychological line," but it is clearly a significant one. Other government officials have talked of either March or June.
In June, it will be a year since the talks stalled. The international community will have been trying to persuade North Korea to rejoin the talks for 12 month, but if that doesn't work, another way must be found. Within the IAEA, U.S. and Japan, there are many who feel that once June passes, the dispute has to go to the UN Security Council.
North Korea is encouraging these rumors. Pyongyang shut down a reactor in Yongbyon last month and is preparing to extract its spent fuel rods once again. The moves too point to May or June.
¡ß What Crisis?
As talk of the six-party talks becomes faint, rumors of a June crisis are getting louder. It is likely the U.S. will unite with the other four parties to the talks, to put pressure on Pyongyang, and going it alone has several options. The first is referring the matter to the UN Security Council. Russia has already said it would agree, international press reports say: the problem is China. But Beijing wants a visit to North Korea by President Hu Jintao. If Hu doesn't go to Pyongyang before June, it could follow that China's persuasive powers are not sufficient, and in that case it might sit and watch as the Security Council deals with the issue as it did during the 1994 nuclear crisis.
But North Korea could also choose to conduct a nuclear test in order to break the deadlock. If it does, it would shake the security on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia to its foundations. Foreign Ministry officials say it is pointless to try to predict what might happen afterwards.
¡ß Seoul's response
The Korean government remains skeptical of the rumors. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Monday we must first "explore the facts" of any imminent nuclear test. "China and the U.S., too, have their suspicions about the nuclear issue, but they aren't changing their basic policies yet," he said.
A government official said the rumors "are just a presumption of the worst of the worst-case situations." "Even when the U.S. was preparing to bomb the North in 1994, it was only considering the possibility, and it decided that it wasn't realistic," he said. Another official said, "Just because the matter goes to the UN Security Council doesn't make it a crisis. With Iraq, a war broke out only after 47 UN resolutions were adopted over a 10-year period.¡±
There have been rumors of an impending crisis several times since the second round of the North Korean nuclear dispute in the fall of 2002 over Pyongyang's enriched uranium program -- for March 2003, October 2003 and October 2004. All these crises were averted through dialogue or were of questionable provenance.
"I think the rumors of a June crisis are being spread by Japan's conservative media," said Moon Chung-in, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia Policy Initiative. "A nuclear test is North Korea's last trump card, so it wouldn¡¯t play it lightly, and I think it's unlikely that the North would export nuclear materials to a third country.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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