Time to Reopen Talks With North Korea?
Ten years after the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program were established and eight years after North Korea pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons program, rejoin the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and allow the reentry of IAEA monitors in the September 19, 2005, joint statement, Pyongyang remains intransigent and intent on bolstering its capabilities. China is pushing for the resumption of the talks to ease mounting regional tensions, yet North Korean officials are only willing to return to the table if Pyongyang is not bound by preconditions. The United States and South Korea are unwilling to reconvene talks before North Korea takes concrete steps that demonstrate its seriousness about denuclearization. In this Q&A, Paul Haenle says that ideally, the parties will be able to return to the Six-Party Talks framework one day with all countries genuinely working toward the central goal of North Korea’s denuclearization. But the prospect of that ha...