Dealing Directly with North Korea

Dealing Directly with North Korea 

North Korea has been hosting a series of visits by American groups in the past month, including a view of uranium-enrichment facilities, in what some experts see as an effort to de-escalate tensions in the Korean peninsula (CSMonitor). One U.S. expert recently in Pyongyang, Leon V. Sigal, says North Koreans have been "trying to get negotiations going," both bilaterally with the United States as well as in Six Party Talks, and he believes resumed talks are the best way to ease the threat from the North. He says for over twenty years, Pyongyang has favored a two-track approach: increasing the nuclear and missile threat while suggesting "ways we can negotiate out of it." Recently, he says, South Korea has posed an obstacle to negotiations, and he notes it is wrong for the United States to "pick a fight" with China over its failure to pressure North Korea.