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Even negotiators from participating countries expressed surprise at the speed of change in relations between the U.S. and North Korea when six-nation nuclear talks resumed in Beijing on Monday. "Spring has come in Beijing, too,” North Korea's chief negotiator Kim Kye-gwan said in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Kim said once the question of North Korea’s frozen funds in Macau’s Banco Delta Asia issue is completely resolved, Pyongyang will halt its nuclear activities in Yongbyon.

Earlier Kim’s U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill and Treasury Assistant Secretary Daniel Glaser issued a statement saying that all of the US$25 million frozen in BDA will be released. That ends differences of opinion between the departments of state and the treasury over whether to release all or only some of the frozen assets. North Korea is expected to start shutting down nuclear facilities, including the 5 megawatt atomic reactor at Yongbyon.

In Monday’s meeting, the chief negotiators reportedly discussed a possible meeting late next month of the foreign ministers of the six nations, as envisaged in their Feb. 13 agreement. They also agreed that North Korea will simultaneously declare its nuclear facilities to the international atomic watchdog and disable them. The Feb. 13 agreement specified neither sequence nor timing.

◆ "Go all the way"

According to a source in Beijing, the U.S. and North Korea built a considerable amount of mutual trust in Berlin talks in January and the six-party talks in February. When the negotiators signed the Feb. 13 agreement, Kim reportedly stressed the need to implement it, telling Hill, "Let's go all the way." Visiting New York early this month, Kim reportedly drank with Hill late into the night and was 40 minutes late for the next morning meeting as a result. In fact, the last month or so has been full of gentle shocks. Right after the Feb. 13 agreement was signed, North Korea invited Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to discuss the shutdown of nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. Kim's visit to New York came earlier than expected, and during his stay there the North Korean vice foreign minister, in an unusual endorsement of American culture, took in the musical "The Producers" on Broadway, which one South Korean official interprets as a “message of change.”

During working-group meetings on energy and economic cooperation, North Korea said it would prefer heavy fuel oil in installments because it has not enough storage facilities for more than 50,000 tons. That admission in itself, according to a diplomatic source in Beijing, signals a tremendous change for a country as concerned with “face” as North Korea.

◆ BDA solution ‘very, very soon’

The U.S. has changed its attitude to the extent where critics accuse it of throwing principle to the wind for the sake of results. Few expected Washington to release all the frozen $25 million, which it has said was ill-gotten gains from counterfeiting and other illicit activities. The change was embodied by Glaser's forgiving statement in Beijing on Monday. When news reports predicted that the six-party talks would have a bumpy road ahead due to the BDA issue, Hill met with journalists on Sunday evening and put North Korea at ease, promising a solution to the BDA issue “very, very soon."

◆ Domestic needs

Many observers guess that the thaw is due to domestic issues in both countries. Experts are of the view that the loss of more than 3,000 American soldiers in the Iraq War has forced President George W. Bush into an about-face in his North Korea policy to maximize peaceful diplomatic efforts. Has North Korea changed too? A senior South Korean official said, "We're curious as well. We feel that North Korea is trying to find a breakthrough in the current situation, where Kim Jong-il's leadership is threatened by U.S. financial sanctions and the UN Security Council sanction." A fellow with a state-run research institute warns the change does not necessarily mean that North Korea has made a “strategic decision” to give up its nuclear weapons. “We will see whether North Korea has only temporarily made the change to avert a pressing crisis or not when the negotiators discuss the disablement of North Korea's nuclear facilities," he added.

(englishnews@chosun.com )