Global Security Newswire

North Korea could represent a greater security challenge due to ambiguities surrounding the continuing transfer of power in the "proven proliferator" state following the death last year of longtime dictator Kim Jong Il, a top U.S. military commander said on Thursday (see GSN, Feb. 8).

Kim Jong Il's youngest son is North Korea's new leader but it is not apparent to international observers whether Kim Jong Un has been empowered with the same decision-making authority as his father. The younger Kim is understood to be in his late 20s, have relatively scant military experience and to rely on a close circle of older family members as advisers. The United States is concerned that the regime could seek to boost Kim Jong Un's standing with the military by ordering a fresh attack on South Korea or new missile and nuclear tests.

"With the uncertainties associated with the ongoing leadership transition, upcoming challenges on the [Korean] Peninsula may be even greater, the Yonhap News Agency quoted Adm. Samuel Locklear as saying.

"North Korea's potential use of WMD presents a serious threat," Locklear said in a prepared statement to senators for a Capitol Hill hearing to approve his appointment as the new chief of U.S. Pacific Command.

 "On the surface, North Korea appears stable, and Kim Jong Un and his leadership is primarily focused on domestic matters. However, enduring U.S. and allied concerns -- North Korea's past provocative behavior, large conventional military, proliferation activities, and pursuit of asymmetric advantages through its ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs, including uranium enrichment -- presents a serious threat to the United States, our allies and partners in the region and the international community," Locklear said.

He continued,  "North Korea's continued proliferation efforts pose a significant threat to the Pacific region and beyond."

Illegal North Korean weapon and technology exports have led to a "serious and growing capability to target U.S. forces and our allies in the Middle East and assisted Syria in building a covert reactor in the early 2000s, which would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons," he said (see GSN, Nov. 16, 2011; Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency I, Feb. 9).

Prior to the December death of Kim Jong Il, the Obama administration was understood to have been trying to negotiate to provide the North with food aid in exchange for Pyongyang ceasing its uranium enrichment program. That line of dialogue is thought to have come to halt as Washington waits for an appropriate signal from the Kim Jong Un regime.

Officials from Pyongyang and Washington met in Beijing for discussions of food aid just days prior to Kim's death.

"We are still awaiting clarification as to whether North Korea is ready to come to the talks along the lines that we would expect if we're going to resume them," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told journalists in Washington.

She did not provide any details on the status of the broken-off talks, Yonhap reported

The Obama administration is waiting for an "updated set of instructions" from its dialogue partners on the matter, Nuland said (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency II, Feb. 10).

A deal to shut down North Korea's uranium program would remove one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of the long-frozen six-nation negotiations aimed at permanent North Korean denuclearization. The regional talks were last held in December 2008; they encompass China, Japan, both Koreas, Russia and the United States. 

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in a Thursday television interview called on the international community to increase its efforts to keep North Korea and other rogue states from developing credible and reliable nuclear deterrents, Yonhap reported

"Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula stands out as an important international issue," Lee said in Saudi Arabia. "The Republic of Korea believes that the countries possessing nuclear weapons should reduce them gradually and we should prevent efforts to newly posses nuclear weapons."

Lee is presently on a tour of the Middle East, with stops planned in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. A key aim of his tour is to attain pledges from Arab petroleum producers that they will step up exports to South Korea should Seoul follow U.S. urging and slash its purchase of Iranian crude oil (see related GSN story, today).

Riyadh has reportedly signaled it will ramp up oil production to encourage other nations to end their Iranian petroleum imports in accordance with multinational efforts to persuade Iran to curb its controversial nuclear development.

"Someday, the planet should be made a place without nuclear weapons. That is the goal and dream that humankind should realize in the end," Lee said. "Therefore, the international community should cooperate to prevent those trying to arm themselves with nuclear weapons" (Yonhap News Agency III, Feb. 9).