SEOUL — Government officials and security analysts in the region say North Korea is scaling back its threat-making campaign and showing signs that it wants to reduce tensions with South Korea and the United States.
The assessment, gaining popularity among policymakers in recent days, does not mean that North Korea will soon agree to talks, or that the long-term threat posed by its weapons program has been in any way tamed. But officials say they are encouraged by a shift over the last week in Pyongyang’s state-issued rhetoric, which, though still venomous, now includes hints about reconciliation.
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“The tensions should gradually decrease from here, but we cannot lose ourselves” to complacency, a South Korean defense ministry official said, requesting anonymity to convey government thinking. “We do still have to be prepared for any provocations.”
Dialogue will be difficult, because Washington and Pyongyang are fundamentally at odds over what must happen before officials from both sides can meet. The North on Thursday issued a lengthy statement laying out its conditions for talks, including the withdrawal of United Nations sanctions and the removal of all U.S. nuclear assets from the region. The United States — which has already rejected such steps — instead wants Pyongyang to live up to preexisting disarmament agreements.
Still, analysts say it’s noteworthy that Pyongyang is even raising the possibility of talks, given that in recent weeks it has pledged nuclear annihilation of the United States, South Korea, Japan and Guam. That rhetoric, coupled with the North’s renewed effort to produce weapons-grade plutonium and its temporary suspension of a joint industrial complex on the North-South border, helped pushed tensions on the Korean peninsula to their highest point in two decades.
If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is indeed ready to de-escalate, the strategy would fit a pattern established by his father, Kim Jong Il, who occasionally raised the threat of war as a way to win concessions from the West and from South Korea. The pre-talks concessions the North asked for Thursday appear farfetched, but could mark the starting line for negotiations, some North Korea watchers say.
As part of its demands, North Korea also called on the South to stop blaming it for a recent cyberattack and for the 2010 torpedoing of a South Korean ship. In addition, the North called for the end to what it described as “nuclear war drills,” including the ongoing joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises scheduled to finish later this month.
“Dialogue can never go with war actions,” North Korea said, in a statement released by its state-run news agency and attributed to the National Defense Commission, an important policymaking body.
A South Korean foreign ministry spokesman called the North’s demands “illogical.”
Analysts caution that there is still plenty of uncertainty about what North Korea will do next. Foreign governments have virtually no access to the decision-makers in North Korea’s top leadership, and must instead assess Pyongyang’s strategy using a mix of propaganda signal-reading and fuzzy intelligence.
One key question focuses on whether the North will shoot off the one or two mid-range missiles that are positioned at the ready on its eastern coastline. Defense experts in Seoul had initially figured North Korea would conduct the test-firing as part of its drive to raise tensions. Now, they see several alternative scenarios: The North could shoot the missiles off as a symbolic show of victory to its own people. It could also use them as a bargaining chip for talks.
“North Korea may try to negotiate with the U.S. using the missile launch as a leverage,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses in Seoul. “The North can still try to put pressure on the U.S. by creating an unstable situation on the Korean peninsula with military provocations if the U.S. chooses not to talk with them.”
Washington over the last month has changed its own strategy on how to handle North Korea’s saber-rattling. Initially, the United States countered the North with high-profile deterrence, flying nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the peninsula and speeding up the deployment of a missile defense system to Guam.
But the U.S. has more recently tried to limit signs of military force. It postponed an intercontinental ballistic missile test earlier this month. When Secretary of State John F. Kerry visited Seoul last week, he opted out of a meeting at U.S. military headquarters here with Gen. James D. Thurman, the commander of American forces on the peninsula. Instead, Thurman and Kerry met privately at Kerry’s hotel, a senior State Department official said.
On his trip through Asia, which included stops in Beijing and Tokyo, Kerry broached the possibility of negotiations with Pyongyang. But he added that the United States and its Asian allies want to “make [the] goal of denuclearization a reality.”
Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.
The assessment, gaining popularity among policymakers in recent days, does not mean that North Korea will soon agree to talks, or that the long-term threat posed by its weapons program has been in any way tamed. But officials say they are encouraged by a shift over the last week in Pyongyang’s state-issued rhetoric, which, though still venomous, now includes hints about reconciliation.
China sandstorm, pizza championship, Burmese New Year, planet Mercury and more.
Latest stories from Foreign
Anthony Faiola and Eliza Mackintosh Tens of thousands line the route of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s funeral procession.
Edward Cody Economists warn rules and regulations smothering growth as country tries to emerge from slump.
John Reed | Financial Times
40 years after cease-fire, Israelis in the Golan Heights watch as Syria’s civil war edges ever closer.
Nick Miroff United States could benefit as countries explore an expanded trade relationship.
Jenna Johnson and Steven Mufson Graduate student from China was killed while watching Boston Marathon with two friends.
“The tensions should gradually decrease from here, but we cannot lose ourselves” to complacency, a South Korean defense ministry official said, requesting anonymity to convey government thinking. “We do still have to be prepared for any provocations.”
Dialogue will be difficult, because Washington and Pyongyang are fundamentally at odds over what must happen before officials from both sides can meet. The North on Thursday issued a lengthy statement laying out its conditions for talks, including the withdrawal of United Nations sanctions and the removal of all U.S. nuclear assets from the region. The United States — which has already rejected such steps — instead wants Pyongyang to live up to preexisting disarmament agreements.
Still, analysts say it’s noteworthy that Pyongyang is even raising the possibility of talks, given that in recent weeks it has pledged nuclear annihilation of the United States, South Korea, Japan and Guam. That rhetoric, coupled with the North’s renewed effort to produce weapons-grade plutonium and its temporary suspension of a joint industrial complex on the North-South border, helped pushed tensions on the Korean peninsula to their highest point in two decades.
If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is indeed ready to de-escalate, the strategy would fit a pattern established by his father, Kim Jong Il, who occasionally raised the threat of war as a way to win concessions from the West and from South Korea. The pre-talks concessions the North asked for Thursday appear farfetched, but could mark the starting line for negotiations, some North Korea watchers say.
As part of its demands, North Korea also called on the South to stop blaming it for a recent cyberattack and for the 2010 torpedoing of a South Korean ship. In addition, the North called for the end to what it described as “nuclear war drills,” including the ongoing joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises scheduled to finish later this month.
“Dialogue can never go with war actions,” North Korea said, in a statement released by its state-run news agency and attributed to the National Defense Commission, an important policymaking body.
A South Korean foreign ministry spokesman called the North’s demands “illogical.”
Analysts caution that there is still plenty of uncertainty about what North Korea will do next. Foreign governments have virtually no access to the decision-makers in North Korea’s top leadership, and must instead assess Pyongyang’s strategy using a mix of propaganda signal-reading and fuzzy intelligence.
One key question focuses on whether the North will shoot off the one or two mid-range missiles that are positioned at the ready on its eastern coastline. Defense experts in Seoul had initially figured North Korea would conduct the test-firing as part of its drive to raise tensions. Now, they see several alternative scenarios: The North could shoot the missiles off as a symbolic show of victory to its own people. It could also use them as a bargaining chip for talks.
“North Korea may try to negotiate with the U.S. using the missile launch as a leverage,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses in Seoul. “The North can still try to put pressure on the U.S. by creating an unstable situation on the Korean peninsula with military provocations if the U.S. chooses not to talk with them.”
Washington over the last month has changed its own strategy on how to handle North Korea’s saber-rattling. Initially, the United States countered the North with high-profile deterrence, flying nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the peninsula and speeding up the deployment of a missile defense system to Guam.
But the U.S. has more recently tried to limit signs of military force. It postponed an intercontinental ballistic missile test earlier this month. When Secretary of State John F. Kerry visited Seoul last week, he opted out of a meeting at U.S. military headquarters here with Gen. James D. Thurman, the commander of American forces on the peninsula. Instead, Thurman and Kerry met privately at Kerry’s hotel, a senior State Department official said.
On his trip through Asia, which included stops in Beijing and Tokyo, Kerry broached the possibility of negotiations with Pyongyang. But he added that the United States and its Asian allies want to “make [the] goal of denuclearization a reality.”
Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.