Intentions as muddy as language

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Intentions as muddy as language

North Korea’s surprise announcement of Friday, whatever its intention, lends a further urgency to the coming Beijing talks about the North’s nuclear development plans. The North may have crossed the so-called “red line” and started reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, and is ever closer to extracting weapons-grade plutonium.
Without concrete intelligence evidence ― satellite surveillance and U.S. reconnaissance planes have come up empty ― North Korea watchers in Seoul are cautiously dismissing Pyeongyang’s latest remark as a negotiating strategy.
“North Korea’s intention is to pre-emptively strike a strong stance against the United States, which they expect to take a hard line in the talks, in order to gain a better bargaining position,” said Professor Kim Young-soo of Sogang University.
“The North’s move is intended to drive home the point that the United States needs a bold policy change, and that there is not much time left,” an official at Seoul’s National Security Council said.
In Friday’s North Korean Central News Agency statement, the North called China the “host state,” while saying essential issues regarding the nuclear issue would be discussed with the United Sates.
A difference in the English translation and the Korean version strengthened speculation that the North was striking a strategic pose. The phrase, “We are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase as we sent interim information to the U.S. and other countries concerned early in March after resuming our nuclear activities from December last year” has the Seoul government and the U.S. State Department trying to decode what is meant by “final phase.”
Lack of evidence is driving the confusion. In late January, Korean intelligence sources claimed it found North Korean trucks moving spent fuel rods, but could not confirm if they had begun reprocessing them.
“We have verified that they have started activating the boiler outside of the radioactive chemical laboratory,” said an intelligence official. “But we haven’t found any evidence that they have started reprocessing,” adding that there were no signs of such activities.
Seoul officials also noted that if the United States had received reports from the North, Seoul would have been notified. That point was in response to the North Korean assertion that it had notified the United States that reprocessing had begun.


by Oh Young-hwan
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