N. Korea may revive nuclear brinkmanship against new U.S. administration: report

SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Yonhap) -- North Korea may resort to brinkmanship to up the ante in multilateral talks on its nuclear program, but drastic U.S. concessions by the incoming U.S. administration are unlikely, a report said Monday.

Obama has said he is willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to
resolve the nuclear dispute, but his engagement policy, given no results, may
also switch to a tough stance, said the report by the Institute of Foreign
Affairs and National Security, a think tank under the foreign affairs ministry.
"North Korea may become less reasonable in the face of growing challenges from
instability of its regime and rumors of leader Kim Jong-il's ill health," the
report said.
After an initial wait-and-see period, Pyongyang may raise military threats and
even detonate a second nuclear device to gain incentives, it said. Pyongyang
conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 amid the stalemate of the six-party
talks.
"Given its previous behavior, we cannot rule out a possibility that North Korea
may threaten to suspend its denuclearization process, boycott the six-party talks
and fire missiles or a nuclear weapon and may even take such actions so as to
tame the new Obama administration or increase its leverage in the nuclear
negotiations," it said.
Such a strategy, however, is unlikely to draw compromises from Washington as
Obama may then toughen his position, it said. Obama is unlikely to meet North
Korea's Kim in his early years and will be tougher than his predecessor, George
W. Bush, in dealing with Pyongyang's brinkmanship, the report said.
"The North Korea policy of the Obama administration that has called for dialogue
and negotiation may appear flexible on the surface, but in substance, it will be
meticulous and hard-grained," the report said.
"Particularly on the verification issue, the Obama administration is likely to
adopt a tougher stance than the Bush administration, which implies the
Pyongyang-Washington relations won't be very smooth," it said.
In the new U.S. administration -- juggling the economic crisis, the war in Iraq
and Iran's nuclear drive among others -- North Korea will likely "be pushed back
further down in the U.S. diplomacy priority list," it said.
This past year saw little progress in the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing
North Korea. In the latest round, the participating countries -- South and North
Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia -- failed to reach an agreement on how
to verify North Korea's past nuclear activities.
The sporadic talks started in 2003. In a breakthrough deal in October 2007, North
Korea agreed to give up its nuclear program in exchange for 1 million tons of
energy. About half of the promised aid has so far been delivered, with Pyongyang
calling for speedier delivery of the rest.
Should the nuclear stalemate continue, the report said, North Korea may turn to
South Korea as its last source of assistance. The global economic crisis will
weigh heavy to the North, as its mineral export prices fall and outside aid
decreases, and Pyongyang may face another food shortage crisis it suffered in the
mid-1990s, the report said.
"In the latter part of 2009," the report said, "in case Pyongyang is still
deadlocked in obstacles to the six-party talks and relations with the U.S., there
is a possibility that it may try to find refuge in dialogue with South Korea."
This past year, South Korea gave no food aid to the North, which has cut off
inter-Korean dialogue. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak adopted a tougher
stance than his liberal predecessors in his first year in office, demanding
Pyongyang dismantle its nuclear facilities and improve its human rights
conditions in return for continued aid shipments.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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