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North Korea: Officials Consider Inter-Korean Air Connection North Korean officials arrived in South Korea Sunday to study the feasibility of opening an air link to the North’s site where an international consortium is building a nuclear power plant (see GSN, May 6). The officials, who are visiting nuclear power plants and airports, will return to North Korea May 24. Their visit follows an earlier one by technicians late last year, but comes as North-South talks have reached a stalemate, according to Reuters. There is no regular travel link between North and South Korea. If officials agree to establish one, it would serve only to fly personnel and equipment from South Korea to the site where the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization is building two nuclear reactors (Reuters/PlanetArk, May 21). Cooperation Meanwhile, South Korean analysts yesterday predicted that North Korea will continue negotiating with KEDO to gain leverage with the United States and solve North Korea’s energy crisis, according to the Korea Herald. Last month, North Korean and KEDO officials negotiated to create a protocol regarding compensation for damages in case of a nuclear accident. “North Korea aims to convey to the United States that it is doing its due share to implement the Agreed Framework by cooperating in the KEDO project,” said Suh Choo-suk, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “Though the North’s cooperative gestures will not narrow the fundamental differences between Washington and Pyongyang on the issues of the power plant construction, North Korea may think it can at least gain the upper hand in its talks with the United States,” Suh said. North Korea’s desperate need for energy will also push the country to cooperate with KEDO, Yun Duk-min of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security said. “It is in Pyongyang’s interest to expedite the construction of the power plants, though the construction will take at least five more years,” Yun said (Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, May 21).
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