South Korea will "pay an expensive price" for continuing to fire on a North Korean navy patrol boat as it pulled back from a naval clash on Monday, Pyongyang warned today (see GSN, Nov. 11).
The North's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper stated in a commentary that "warmongers who like to play with fire will be certain to pay an expensive price," Reuters reported.
The exchange of fire between two ships on the Yellow Sea was the first such incident in seven years. The neighboring states have observed an uneasy truce since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
"The armed clash on the West (Yellow) Sea was not an accident but was a premeditated act of aggression by the South's military seeking intensifying of tensions on the Korean Peninsula," according to the newspaper (Jack Kim, Reuters, Nov. 12).
The naval clash followed close on the heels of an announcement by the U.S. State Department that it had accepted the North's invitation to dispatch U.S. senior envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang before year's end for direct talks. Washington wants the meeting to lead quickly to resumption of talks intended to produce North Korean denuclearization.
The multilateral nuclear negotiations last occurred in December 2008. The talks also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
The timing of the incident has led some to believe that the North is attempting to escalate matters in order to strengthen its bargaining position.
"It is aimed at extracting concessions from the U.S. by making it seem as if hawks are pitted against doves in Pyongyang ahead of negotiations," South Korean academic Yoon Deok-min told the Associated Press (Matthew Lee, Associated Press/Google News, Nov. 11).
Meanwhile, North Korea's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, met with French special envoy Jack Lang in Pyongyang today, Agence France-Presse reported.
Lang is in the middle of a weeklong fact-finding trip to the country that is believed to include discussions on the North's nuclear program. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said Lang also met with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun.
The French envoy declined to say whether he would be meeting with reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during his trip, which is expected to conclude tomorrow (Agence France-Presse/Straits Times, Nov. 12).
Elsewhere, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday praised China for its cooperation in enforcing heightened U.N. Security Council sanctions against the North after its second nuclear test in the spring, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
"They have been extremely helpful with respect to North Korea," Clinton in an interview for the "Charlie Rose Show." "They know that they can't just turn a blind eye to North Korea's provocative behavior, that it's very destabilizing, and it isn't to be left to others."
Beijing is North Korea's main supporter on the international stage. In the past China has moved to block critical U.N. Security Council resolutions against its neighbor.
"Look at what we achieved with North Korea," Clinton said. "We got China and Russia, along with Japan and South Korea, working with us to impose the toughest sanctions ever. Now why then is North Korea beginning to say they want to talk? They want to talk because they see a united front against them" (Hwang Doo-hyong, Yonhap News Agency, Nov. 10).
Victor Cha, President George W. Bush's top adviser on the North, told CNN that Beijing has the most negotiating sway with Pyongyang.
"The Chinese have the most material leverage on North Korea," Cha said. "They are the host of the six-party talks."
He suggested that Obama should meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao to work out a plan for bringing North Korea back to negotiating table.
Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said that China might only go so far in pressuring North Korea.
"There is a limit to how far [China] may want to go. They don't want to be so rough that you have an uproar in North Korea," Blix said, He added: "Nor will they want North Korea to be gobbled up by South Korea and have the United States moving up to the Yalu River again."
Cha speculated that North Korea might argue that the international community should allow it to keep a portion of its nuclear capability.
"They've come so far now for whatever reason that they probably feel as though retaining soem semblance of a nuclear deterrent is in the best interest as they trade some of it away for many goodies from the outside world" (Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Nov. 11).