Global Security Newswire

The State Department's top envoy for North Korea will be in South Korea, China and Japan next week for talks with his counterparts and other senior officials.

Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies will lead a team of officials in the May 12-18 trip, the State Department said in a press release.

Regional tensions have been high since the North conducted its third nuclear test in February. After being hit with a new round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, Pyongyang threatened to fire nuclear missiles at the United States and South Korea, cut off military contact with Seoul, and moved ballistic missiles to its east coast in advance of a possible launch that has yet to materialize.

"We are beginning to see what this young man, [North Korean ruler] Kim Jong Un, is all about and we are beginning to see that he is a bit of a throwback," Agence France-Presse quoted Davies as saying on Thursday at the Japan Society in New York. "He may even be approaching these issues more intensively, more provocatively, in a sense a bit more dangerously."

Davies said his upcoming meetings would focus on ensuring China, Japan and South Korea remain intent on luring North Korea back to six-nation nuclear talks last held in December 2008. The negotiations aim to persuade Pyongyang to accept denuclearization in exchange for a host of financial, security and diplomatic benefits.

"We are in a pressure phase. We are simply trying to sharpen North Korea's choices. We are trying to close off avenues to them other than a diplomatic way forward," Davies said.

North Korea's latest nuclear test and a December rocket launch that put a satellite into space, both showing notable advances from prior attempts, are raising fears about the nation's capacity to eventually reach the capacity to target the United States with a nuclear-arrmed missile, the Associated Press reported on Friday. Pyongyang today is believed to hold four to eight plutonium-fueled devices; its aim could be 80 to 100 missiles, according to Hahm Chaibong, who leads the Seoul-based Asan Institute. Others offered more conservative estimates but said the threat cannot be dismissed.

"People made fun of their long-range missile until it didn't fail. There was sort of this, 'Why wasn't I informed there was a long-range missile threat?' Well, we've been warning you for 15 years," said North Korea specialist Bruce Klingner.

The North on Friday characterized this week's meeting between President Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye as "a curtain-raiser to a dangerous war to invade," the Associated Press reported. It called Park's travels to Washington a "despicable sycophantic trip to please her master."

North Korea's Supreme Court said a U.S. citizen facing a 15-year prison sentence had infiltrated the country with the aim of toppling the government, Reuters reported on Friday. There are suspicions that the North is holding Kenneth Bae in hopes of drawing concessions or a visit by another high-profile U.S. figure, as it has in past detention cases.