North Korea test fires submarine-launched missile

Six years after North Korea declared the end of multilateral talks on its nuclear programme, officials in Seoul, Beijing and Washington are seeking ways back into a dialogue amid signs that Pyongyang's weapons drive could be gaining dangerous momentum.

On Saturday, North Korea issued footage of what appeared to be its first underwater launch of a ballistic missile from a submarine, attended by supreme leader Kim Jong Un, who called it proof of his army's ability to marshal "a world-level strategic weapon".

The evidence of growth in Pyongyang's nuclear threat rounded off a week in which its erstwhile negotiating partners had stepped up efforts to tackle it.

Hwang Joon-kook, a South Korean diplomat tasked with addressing the North's nuclear threat, flew to Washington and Beijing this week to discuss mooted "exploratory talks", which he said could be held without any prior concessions from Pyongyang.

At a meeting in Moscow on Friday, Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin vowed to pursue a resumption of the long-stalled six-party talks on the subject, which would also include the US, Japan and both Koreas.

The renewed focus comes after a series of warnings on the growing size and sophistication of Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

In February, Chinese officials reportedly told US nuclear specialists that North Korea could have as many as 20 nuclear warheads, and could double that figure by next year. Last month, Adm William Gortney, head of the US Northern Command, said that he believed North Korea was capable of miniaturising a warhead for use with an intercontinental missile that could reach the US.

Concern among analysts and officials is reinforced by the apparent lack of interest in negotiations from North Korea, which has enshrined the nuclear programme in its constitution, and says it will not relinquish it as long as it perceives a nuclear threat from the US.

"It is ridiculous for the US to talk about sincerity on the part of [North Korea]," the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said last month. "Washington had better not dream of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula before realising the denuclearisation of the world."

The first incarnation of the six-party talks began in 2003, yielding after four years a deal under which North Korea would close its nuclear facilities in exchange for aid - an agreement never consummated, as Pyongyang and Washington failed to agree on a protocol for inspections of North Korean nuclear sites.

Pyongyang declared the death of the multilateral talks in 2009 after UN sanctions were imposed over an abortive long-range rocket launch. Another such launch, in April 2012, wrecked a bilateral deal with the US signed two months earlier, in which North Korea had promised a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.

While some analysts perceived a severe blow to US appetite for dealing with North Korea after that failed deal, current and former administration officials say that efforts have continued unabated.

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Yet Washington has not specified what prior steps North Korea should take to clear the way for talks. Some in Washington argue that North Korea should first take measures promised under previous pacts - such as freezing nuclear development and accepting international inspectors - but Pyongyang says talks should happen without preconditions.

"My feeling is that if the North Koreans would commit to a test moratorium, that could be a basis for going back," says Victor Cha, who served as an adviser on Asia policy to former president George W Bush. He says the Obama administration believes it's diplomacy is transformational "and they just need a shot."

Washington, according to Mr Cha, has "taken the lead" on some areas of North Korea policy from Seoul, where President Park Geun-hye has made calmer relations with Pyongyang a key pledge of her administration. But the redoubled efforts to resume talks has sparked alarm from some South Korean conservatives.

Talks without preconditions would "be the starting point for another failure", says Kim Tae-hyo, former chief foreign policy adviser to Ms Park's predecessor Lee Myung-bak. "If you really want negotiations, you have to gear up pressure against North Korea from the beginning."

South Korean officials say they are encouraged by signs that China has hardened its approach to Pyongyang over the past two years, angered by its third nuclear test in 2013, and by the execution later that year of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's uncle and adviser Jang Song Thaek, a key liaison with Beijing.

Chinese vice-foreign minister Wu Dawei this week affirmed Beijing's position that Pyongyang should halt nuclear activities and readmit international inspectors, while pledging to push it to return to talks, South Korea's foreign ministry said.

But some analysts warn that the would-be negotiators have only a few months to begin talks before US-South Korean joint military exercises in August, which typically bring fierce protests from Pyongyang.

Others argue that talks and offers of assistance cannot push Pyongyang to step back from its nuclear work, arguing for new sanctions that would more severely disrupt the North Korean economy - despite the potential knock-on effects for parts of China's financial sector.

"I don't agree with those who think North Korea will never abandon its nuclear ambitions under any circumstances," Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's chief negotiator at the six-party talks from 2006 to 2007, said after Mr Seiler's remarks at last week's conference. "But under the current sanctions regime, even if I were Kim Jong Un, I would have no incentive."

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