Global Security Newswire

North Korea's senior nuclear negotiator on Tuesday touched down in Beijing for discussions set to begin in two days with a high-level U.S. diplomat, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 17).

First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan is to head up the North Korean delegation to the talks. Obama administration special envoy Glyn Davies will represent the U.S. side.

Thursday's talks would mark the third time in a year that Pyongyang and Washington have discussed prospects for relaunching the paralyzed six-nation process aimed at permanently shuttering North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Observers are expected to closely follow this week's meeting for any indications of whether the North's new leader, Kim Jong Un, plans to be more open to denuclearization than his father, longtime dictator Kim Jong Il, who died in December. The younger Kim at this point is not expected to significantly deviate from his father's policies, which prioritized nuclear advancement as a means of ensuring regime survival (Associated Press/Washington Post, Feb. 20).

Kim Jong Un "faces a tough task in shattering this perception that he is a young, weak and inexperienced leader. So he's more like to take bold, unannounced military action to break such a perception," Sejong Institute researcher Paik Hak-soon told Agence France-Presse.

The United States is expected to use this week's meeting to press the North to cease enriching uranium as a precondition to reviving the six-nation nuclear talks that also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. Pyongyang has refused to accept any conditions to the relaunch of the aid-for-denuclearization negotiations, but reports from late 2011 indicated a potential deal with Washington could see the Stalinist state halt uranium work in exchange for food aid.

Meanwhile, South Korean military personnel on Monday conducted live-ammunition drills not far from a contested Yellow Sea boundary with North Korea.

Though the North Korean military issued a standard threat of "merciless retaliation" for the live-fire maneuvers, "no unusual movement  was detected from the North Korean side during the drill, the second of its kind this year," a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said.

He would not verify the veracity of a Yonhap News Agency report that said South Korean troops fired approximately 5,000 artillery rounds into waters claimed by the South.

Paik said he believed "the South right now is taking a lot of risk" by staging live-fire drills in light of fears that North Korea could carry out new military provocations in order to improve Kim Jong Un's reputation.

In warning against Monday's exercise, the North Korean military said the South "should not forget the lesson" of Yeonpyeong Island, which Pyongyang shelled in November 2010 in retaliation for South Korean artillery drills (Jung Ha-won, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 20).

An unidentified South Korean military official told Yonhap that while no aggressive Northern actions were detected during Monday's exercise, the Stalinist state did place its armed forces on "a higher level of response posture than normal," Reuters reported (Laurence/Kim, Reuters, Feb. 20).

A South Korean defense official on Friday said the North maintains the capability to quickly detonate another nuclear device, Yonhap reported.

The Stalinist state has carried out two nuclear tests to date, the first in 2006 and the second in 2009.

The North "has maintained a state in which it can carry out a nuclear or missile test with only one or two months of additional preparation," the official said in a briefing on South Korean national security strategy.

"We believe the possibility exists for a sudden provocation by North Korea, as Pyongyang seeks to achieve its political goals. But at the moment, we have not identified any unusual signs that missile or nuclear tests are imminent," the official said (Yonhap News Agency/Korea Times, Feb. 17).