Pyongyang to return to talks with Washington only after advancing nuclear capabilities

By Kim Yoo-chul

The chief North Korea analyst at a New York-based nonpartisan think tank believes Pyongyang is set to conduct a nuclear test within this year at the earliest.

The projection by Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), comes just a few days after North Korea passed a law authorizing preemptive nuclear attacks with its leader Kim Jong-un saying the decision is "irreversible."

The recently-passed North Korean law is interpreted as Pyongyang's intention of not returning denuclearization talks and voices its intention of executing a preemptive nuclear strike, if necessary, to protect the regime.

North Korea conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017, according to intelligence officials in South Korea.

"I believe North Korea is likely to conduct its seventh nuclear test at some point in the coming months. As Kim Jong-un appears to have suggested, the purpose is to make nuclear weapons possession indivisible from North Korea's regime security by attaining an undeniable and irreversible nuclear capability," Snyder said in a recent interview.

Reiterating that North Korea has always been a "security first" state, its recent decision should be viewed as the North Korean leader's affirmation of nuclear weapons being the main means to guarantee the security of his regime, according to Snyder. "The move to codify the North's nuclear weapons status is consistent with efforts to include it in the preamble to the North Korean constitution a decade ago," he added.

Scott A. Snyder

President Yoon Suk-yeol's foreign policy team still hopes to bring North Korea back to talks with the presidential office saying the South Korean leader will elaborate on his "audacious initiative" at next week's United Nations General Assembly in New York that may help improve North Korea's moribund economy and the living conditions of North Korean citizens depending the progress of Pyongyang's denuclearization efforts.

But Snyder expects the chances are low that North Korea will accept South Korea's offer.

"What is absent from inter-Korean dialogue is an immediate and overarching need on either side to rely on dialogue to achieve essential national security objectives. As a result, dialogue may not be forthcoming until both sides have a felt need and sense of urgency around the necessity to engage in diplomacy with each other," the chief Korea analyst at CFR responded.

Talks between the two Koreas and North Korea and the United States have been stalled since a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2019 ended without a deal when then U.S. President Donald Trump refused to accept the North Korean leader's demand for a partial lifting of sanctions and offer security guarantees in exchange for a phased nuclear disarmament.

The U.S. said it is willing to resume dialogue with North Korea, but only after certain conditions are met. Washington said its position in pursuing a verifiable and complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula hasn't changed since the former Trump administration.

Citing North Korea's failed approach in Hanoi of requesting partial sanctions relief for phased (partial) denuclearization, Snyder said the North has moved on from that position after securing partial sanctions relief through China and Russia's non-enforcement of sanctions.

"If we consider the lessons learned from Hanoi, one possible lesson Kim Jong-un may have taken from the experience is that from his perspective, the United States did not take sufficiently seriously the idea that the North was negotiating from a position of strength. North Korea is asserting that its laws make denuclearization negotiations a non-starter. As a result, it is hard to imagine how the United States and North Korea will be able to frame a diplomatic negotiation process around a set of commonly held objectives," he said.

Political analysts say Pyongyang's continued missile tests underscore its dual purpose _ to sharpen its nuclear arsenal, and to force the United States to view it as a nuclear state. Therefore, the prevailing view among North Korea experts in Seoul is that the North believes it can obtain security guarantees and more economic concessions from a "position of strength."

People watch a TV screen showing a file footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at Seoul Station in Seoul, Sept. 9. Kim stressed his country will never abandon its nuclear weapons to counter the United States, which he accused of attempting to weaken the North's defenses and eventually topple the leadership, state media said. AP-Yonhap

"A logical course of action would be to further strengthen the North's military program so that its nuclear capabilities would be regarded as undeniable and irreversible. Once North Korea's Kim believes he has adequately achieved those objectives, he might in principle then be ready to return to diplomatic negotiations with the United States, but from an even stronger position than the North's Kim was in when he met with Trump in Hanoi in February of 2019," he added.

Quad: a tool for improved Seoul-Tokyo relations

As long as talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea are stalled, South Korea remains highly dependent on China's leverage over the North.

Washington wants to expand the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), an informal strategic architecture comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, to include South Korea, New Zealand and Vietnam. But South Korea's decision to join the expanded Quad will face diplomatic challenges. The Yoon Suk-yeol administration is shifting closer to the United States and hopes to continue discussions on Seoul's participation in the Quad Plus.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, meets India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, left, and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh in Tokyo, Sept. 9. AP-Yonhap

Snyder said the Biden administration wants to use the Quad Plus as a tool to improve relations between Japan and South Korea. Relations between the two neighboring countries, both key U.S. allies, have deteriorated dramatically in recent years over disputes stemming from Japan's World War II atrocities.

Japan removed South Korea from its list of most preferred trading partners after Seoul's top court ordered Japanese companies to compensate surviving South Koreans who were forced to labor in Japanese factories during World War II. Later, the country terminated its military information sharing pact, better known as GSOMIA, with Japan. The U.S. views GSOMIA as a being crucial to the operation of its regional anti-ballistic missile systems. An early renewal of the pact would be a plus for Washington to further strengthen the Quad architecture.

"An apparent precursor for South Korea to pursue more active diplomacy in the context of broader multilateral initiatives such as the Quad is the need for more effective and deeper trilateral U.S.-Japan-South Korea coordination on security issues including the North Korea threat. The Biden administration has emphasized trilateral consultations at the highest levels to achieve progress in the spheres of diplomacy, military and intelligence coordination," Snyder said.

"The Biden administration may see trilateralism as a tool by which to stabilize the Japan-South Korea relationship and to broaden a sense of like-mindedness to address a range of common security challenges in the region," according to the CFR director.