Peninsula can still be free of tension

The Republic of Korea's (ROK) news agency Yonhap has said that Kim Kye-gwan, the first vice-foreign minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), will visit the United States this week to discuss the steps to be taken to resume the talks on the Korean Peninsula denuclearization issue. This will be the first meeting between the DPRK and the US since US special representative for the DPRK Stephen Bosworth's visit to Pyongyang in December 2009.

On July 22, Ri Yong-ho and Wi Sung-lac, heads of DPRK and ROK delegations to the Six-Party Talks, met in Bali, Indonesia, and agreed to make joint efforts to resume the Six-Party Talks. On July 23, DPRK Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun held a meeting with his ROK counterpart Kim Sung-hwan, the first time the two countries' foreign ministers had met since the 15th ASEAN Regional Forum in July 2008.

These developments indicate that the Six-Party Talks could resume soon. Although relations between the DPRK and the ROK is unlikely to warm up within a short time, neither side wants any more conflicts. DPRK-ROK relations deteriorated because of several incidents in 2010, but both countries have made efforts to resume dialogue since the beginning of this year.

During the "secret" meeting between the two countries, the ROK proposed a higher-level meeting on condition that the DPRK apologizes for the Cheonan incident. Cheonan, an ROK corvette, sank on March 26, 2010, for which Seoul blames Pyongyang. Since the DPRK denies any involvement in the incident, it refused the ROK proposal and threatened to sever ties with President Lee Myung-bak's government. The DPRK issued details of the "secret" meeting and left the ROK.

This means the concerted efforts to resume official DPRK-ROK talks have failed. But Seoul hasn't stopped pressuring Pyongyang on the political, economic and diplomatic fronts, and the military standoff on the Korean Peninsula hasn't eased. The DPRK and the ROK are still far from building an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation.

In early April this year, relevant countries agreed to resume the Six-Party Talks. The first step toward the goal was to be the dialogue between heads of DPRK and ROK delegations to the Six-Party Talks. And the second step would be the DPRK-US talks, followed by the Six-Party Talks.

But the ROK changed the "talks between heads of DPRK and ROK delegations to the Six-Party Talks" into "Seoul-Pyongyang talks", and demanded an apology from the DPRK for the Cheonan incident as a precondition for holding higher-level dialogue, something that the DPRK will never agree to. By doing so, the ROK has erected barriers in the path of the Six-Party Talks.

Two trends are evident: First, the ROK has used the threat of nuclear weapons again. On May 8, ROK President Lee Myung-bak said in Berlin that unification of the DPRK and the ROK would be postponed if nuclear weapons still existed on the Korean Peninsula.

Second, the ROK disclosed its intention to separate the Cheonan incident from the Six-Party Talks.