North Korea may be\u00a0trying to get into a strong bargaining position, experts say.<\/b>
\nSEOGWIPO, South Korea \u2014 If North Korea wanted to enter into negotiations, it might decide it first had to gain the upper hand in a hurry, and that it might conclude that the best way to do that was through shooting off one missile after another in rapid succession.
As an explanation for all these launches that North Korea is conducting, it seems at first blush like a stretch.
But a growing number of analysts with a background in talking to North Korean officials wonder whether the relentless pace of\u00a0the North\u2019s missile testing is designed to get Kim Jong Un\u2019s regime into the strongest bargaining position before economic sanctions force it to return to the negotiating table.
\u201cThis is like taekwondo, \u201d said Peter Hayes, the executive director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, referring to the Korean martial art.\u00a0
\u201cThis is the part where your opponent engages the spiral kick to the head with a bloodcurdling scream to put you off balance at the outset, \u201d said Hayes, who has been dealing with North Koreans for more than 20 years.
Kim has made it clear that he\u2019s determined to acquirea missile capable of reaching the continental United States. He has overseen the launch of a dozen missiles in the past four months compared with the 16 fired during the entirety of his father\u2019s 17-year-long reign.
After the latest launch, Kim said that \u201cthe Yankees should be very worried\u201d about the North Korean capability.
But beyond the bombastic pronouncements and technical progress, some analysts see familiar signs that North Korea is ratcheting up the tensions before being forced to talk on American terms.
\u201cThe further they advance towards having an operational arsenal, the more they can get from outside powers just for a freeze when they return to the negotiating table, \u201d said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean nuclear negotiator with the North and former national security adviser.
With more and more sanctions being piled on North Korea, it is just a matter of time until the pressure becomes unbearable, he said.
\u201cSo before they\u2019 re drawn back to the negotiating table, they have every reason to speed up their technical development, \u201d Chun said.
Diplomacy\u00a0still seems a long way off.
The Trump administration has been talking about exerting \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on North Korea, and last weekend\u00a0Defense Secretary\u00a0 Jim Mattis praised China \u2019s \u201crenewed commitment\u201d to leaning on North Korea. Senior administration officials have repeatedly said that the conditions for talks with North Korea are not right.
At \u201cTrack 2\u201d talks in Sweden over the weekend, North Korean representatives\u00a0told American experts and former officials that they were not interested in discussing an end to their missile or nuclear programs. This was the latest of several periodic meetings with American experts and former officials to send messages to the administration in Washington and to test ideas. The State Department knows about the meetings but officials say the talks have no impact.
\u201cThe underlying North Korean message throughout our discussions was that \u2018denuclearization is totally off the table and there is nothing that either the U. S. or South Korea could offer that could achieve denuclearization,\u2019 \u201d said Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, who participated in the weekend\u2019s talks.
Negotiations with North Korea, even when they do happen, do not have a good record of success.
\u201cSix-party\u201d talks in 2005 led Pyongyang to agree to dismantle its nuclear program in return for economic assistance and security guarantees, but the deal collapsed in 2009 when North Korea launched what it said was a satellite but the international community said was part of an intercontinental ballistic missile program.
In 2013, Washington and Pyongyang tried to forge a new deal, known as the \u201cLeap Day\u201d agreement because it was announced Feb. 29, under which North Korea promised no more nuclear tests or long-range missile launches, while Washington offered new humanitarian assistance. That deal lasted only 16 days before North Korea said it was getting ready to launch another \u201csatellite\u201d \u2014 which it duly did.
Despite this poor record, there is a still general agreement that this sort of diplomacy is the least-bad option for dealing with North Korea.
And there have been signs of qualified willingness from both sides.
President Trump, who prides himself on his negotiating skills honed during decades in business, said last month that he would be \u201chonored\u201d to meet Kim, even labeling him a \u201csmart cookie.\u201d\u00a0A top North Korean diplomat, after talks with former American officials in Norway last month, said that the Kim regime would be willing to talk \u201cif the conditions are there.\u201d
Recent efforts to resume official talks have broken down because of various preconditions, including Washington\u2019s insistence that there can be no talks unless denuclearization is on the agenda, and Pyongyang\u2019s insistence on instead discussing a peace treaty \u2014 a document that would lead to calls for the United States to remove all its troops from South Korea while leaving the North as a nuclear state.
At some point Kim could decide that he\u2019s in a strong enough bargaining position, said Gary Samore, who served as President Barack Obama\u2019s top nonproliferation official and is at Harvard\u2019s Belfer Center. \u201cThen he can agree to a test moratorium, just like he did with the Leap Day deal, \u201d he said.
Adding to North Korea\u2019s incentive to talk: the election last month of a pro-engagement president in South Korea. Moon Jae-in has promised to resume talks with Pyongyang if it will help solve the nuclear problem.
\u201cKim Jong Un could agree to take a pause [from testing] and find out what kind of a deal he could get from Moon, who is clearly more willing to address North Korea\u2019s economic interests and security concerns, and to see what Trump, with all his big talk, has on offer, \u201d Samore said.
That could pave the way for further talks. \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019 t think it will get very far, but at least it will calm the current situation and slow down the program, \u201d he said.
Oh Joon, South Korea\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations until last year, agreed that talks would at least stop North Korea from making further progress on its missile program.
\u201cThe Moon Jae-in government will jump at the opportunity for talks, \u201d Oh said. \u201cAnd for Trump, if he can bring North Korea back to denuclearization negotiations, he can say, \u2018See, I have achieved what Obama couldn’t in eight years.\u2019 It\u2019s good for everyone.\u201d
Right now, the question is what does Kim Jong Un think is \u201cenough\u201d in terms of his bargaining position?
\u201cIf he thinks he needs a long-range capability in order to negotiate with the U. S. on strong terms, \u201d Samore said, \u201cthen we may have years of testing ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n