Korea Offers to Halt Nuclear Tests in Exchange for Peace Treaty

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, center left, speaks with South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, left, and U.S.Deputy Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, right, at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, Friday, Jan. 15, 2016.

“If the nuclear threat posed by North Korea … should reach that level of seriousness, South Korea … will face a critical strategic choice: seek the re-introduction of USA nuclear weapons, pursue its own independent nuclear force or accept the necessity of accommodating its nuclear-armed adversaries, often-called ‘Finlandization, ‘” Murdock said.

“We now have unfortunately a decade during which North Korea has totally reversed its obligations to global community, when it comes to missile and nuclear programs”, Blinken told a news conference in Tokyo.

North Korea claimed it had successfully conducted its first hydrogen bomb test on January 6, although doubts have been cast over whether a thermonuclear weapon was in fact detonated.

When questioned whether the U.S. would consider ending joint exercises with South Korea, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said it had alliance commitments to South Korea.

The World Economic Forum withdrew its invitation for North Korea’s foreign minister to attend its annual Davos meeting because of the nuclear test, a move Pyongyang said was “based on unjust political motivation” driven by the United States.

But Hecker, who has visited the North seven times since 2004, said in an interview with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, that the most worrisome result of the test is that North Korea “will have achieved greater sophistication in their bomb design”. The government in Pyongyang repeated its demand for a peace treaty with the U.S.to formally close the 1950-53 Korean War, which technically continues to this day because it ended in a truce. The authority of the United Nations and the nuclear non-proliferation system should be maintained, said Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The country is already under a wide array of global sanctions, and diplomats have said U.N. Security Council members were expected to discuss the possibility of adding to those. The offer, similar to those the country had suggested before, was rejected by United States.