North Korea offered peace talks, U.S. bailed over nukes

The US government had planned to hold talks with North Korea aimed at formally ending the Korean War before Pyongyang carried out its nuclear test in early January, according to the US State Department. “The North rejected our response”, he said in an e-mail statement. “To be sure, we would not engage in concerted discussions with North Korea that did not place an emphasis on denuclearization”.

Both the US and South Korea have been seeking Chinese support for sanctions against North Korea.

They declared their latest “satellite launch” (a disguised test of ICBM technology) and “H-bomb test” (which probably was not a fully functional hydrogen bomb) as “successes” that “startled our planet” and proved too much for the poor old South Korean president to handle: “writhing and wriggling, she sits up all night, spouting rubbish, invectives and vituperation”.

Mr. Obama has pointed to the Iran deal to signal to North Korea that he is open to a similar track with the regime of Kim Jong Un.

The U.S. has already deployed four F-22 stealth fighters and a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS North Carolina, to South Korea. Because it has been isolated for decades, North Korea is not sustained by foreign trade, and is only truly dependent on aid from China.

Now North Korea wants those three sides and South Korea to sign a treaty.

Worldwide organizations, including the European Union and NATO, have said that the test seriously undermined United Nations nuclear resolutions, and have called for North Korea to halt its arms program.

But South Korean analyst Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said working toward regime change or reform through defector organizations won’t be easy, and “change will take time”.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the diplomatic exchanges, but the Obama administration disputed their depiction of events, saying it was North Korea that first proposed the talks rather than the United States, which maintained its focus on ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.

“As we have made clear, denuclearization discussions should be put first, and a peace treaty is not a matter for the USA and the North alone”. However, it did not accept it as the terms did not include Pyongyang’s denuclearization, the State Department confirmed on Sunday.

The U.S. and North Korea agreed in 2005 with other nations including Japan and South Korea that set the groundwork for talks premised on denuclearization.