Nowhere Fast, Day Four

Most of this coverage probably relates to Day Three, nonetheless, it doesn’t suggest much progress, as the AP’s Lim Bo-Mi reports:

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill held a one-on-one meeting Friday morning with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, their fourth such encounter this week. Hill said the nations were still divided over the issue of when the North will receive aid in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program.

“Still we have a lot of differences that remain,” Hill told reporters Friday evening. “I don’t want to suggest for a minute that this is going to be easy.”

The delegates are meeting again Saturday, where they hope to start drafting a joint document on what they have agreed to so far, a Japanese official said on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the ongoing talks.

“There is no tentative draft,” the official said. “All delegations will be striving to draft this common document.”

It would be interesting to see what has been agreed; I suspect it would consist of vague terms about a nuclear-free peninsula and eventual progress toward normalized relations, but with few details or specifics. The failure to agree on even this much would probably signal a breakdown. Nevertheless, we must keep up the appearance that we’re trying to make a go of this, although not even the South Korean delegate sounds optimistic:

All six chief delegates met Friday afternoon and agreed to continue the talks Saturday, said Cho Tae-yong, the No. 2 South Korean delegate. The top delegates will “seriously discuss how to push forward this round of talks,” Cho said.

Despite the apparent impasse at the talks, he said Friday’s meetings “were not lower than my expectation.”

“It’s too early to pack or draw conclusions,” said Cho, head of the Foreign Ministry’s task force on the North Korea nuclear issue.

North Korea is demanding U.S. security guarantees for itself. This much is nothing new. What is fascinating in its absurdity, however, is that North Korea is demanding an end to U.S. security guarantees for South Korea. I wonder (no, I really do) whether South Korea would be willing to concede that point in the face of North Korean demands.