The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has said it will end its nuclear testing, if a peace treaty with Washington can be reached, and the U.S. ends its joint-military exercises with South Korea.
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USA deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken (from left), Japanese vice-foreign minister Akitaka Saiki and South Korea’s first vice-minister of foreign affairs Lim Sung Nam conclude a joint press conference at the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo on Saturday. “It’s very hard to take any of their overtures very seriously”, he said.
The Kim Jong-un regime is coming under ever-mounting pressure now that Iran, its onetime partner in covert arms trade and nuclear and missile development, is free from crippling worldwide sanctions after Sunday’s (Korea time) formal announcement. The United States has some 28,500 troops in South Korea.
Cautious optimism is reemerging that driven by recent breakthroughs with Iran and Cuba, U.S. President Barack Obama could approach the North afresh in a bid to consolidate his foreign policy legacy.
On Jan 6, North Korea said it had tested a hydrogen bomb, sparking condemnation from its neighbours and the U.S., even as experts expressed doubt that the test was of a hydrogen bomb.
When asked if the United States would consider a treaty to stop exercises, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the U.S. had alliance commitments to the Southern Asian nation.
But China’s leverage over Pyongyang is mitigated, analysts say, by its overriding fear of a North Korean collapse and the prospect of a reunified, US-allied Korea directly on its border.
The two Koreas remain technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace agreement.
Vice foreign ministers from the United States, Japan and South Korea also agreed to seek tough US sanctions on Pyongyang, calling for China to take more actions.
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The call came after South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Wednesday also urged the global community, and in particular China, to back harsh sanctions targeting Pyongyang over the nuclear test.
