Open Sources

So when I read last week that according to an anonymous “senior South Korean official,” a North Korean admission that it sank the Cheonan and an apology for shelling of Yeonpyeong Island would not be “a precondition to the resumption of the six-party nuclear disarmament talks,” I decided to wait for the clarification before concluding that the Lee Administration had been neutered. Those clarifications haven’t really cleared much up. One one hand, there’s the newly hard-line Unification Minstry:

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek on Thursday told KTV, “Substantive six-party talks will resume only if the North takes responsible steps” over the provocations and shows it is sincere about denuclearization. Chun Young-woo, the senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security, said an apology from the North cannot solve all inter-Korean problems. “The relationship can improve only if the North both dismantles its nuclear program and changes its attitude” over the attacks.

On the other hand, our anonymous source is still sticking to his or her version:

“The government has not changed its stance that it could [engage] in talks, including six-party talks, with the North even if the North does not apologize for the sinking of the Cheonan,” said the source yesterday. “Although the Cheonan sinking and the Yeonpyeong Island shelling are both issues close to our hearts, denuclearization is a much more important issue at hand here,” the source said.

But this defies logic. How can talks about hidden nuclear programs possibly lead in a productive direction if North Korea isn’t ready to make a clean break with its mendacity and its belligerence about even the things that are open and obvious? And even if you’re one of the few who still believes that the six-party talks have some non-cosmetic function, you have to concede that North Korea sees them as a vehicle for extorting aid. Hence, a willingness to return to talks without extracting an admission of North Korea’s guilt or attaching serious consequences for its aggression only invites more aggression.

Not that I really expect this to happen — especially now — but how dumb will all those conspiracy theorists and a certain has-been diplomat feel if North Korea actually admits to sinking the Cheonan?

There’s a battle brewing at the U.N. over North Korea’s uranium enrichment program — the one that Selig Harrison hasn’t commented on recently.  The L.A. Times reports that the United States will ask the Security Council to condemn North Korea’s program, and Don Kirk reports that the U.S. has already pushed China into breathing the word “uranium,” which some may consider progress.

Admittedly, it’s not a surprising source, but the Chosun Ilbo rounds up fresh reasons to believe that time isn’t on North Korea’s side anymore.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has a new paper on holding members of the North Korean regime accountable for their atrocities.

I’ve hardly been President Obama’s harshest critic on foreign policy, but it completely escapes me how the White House could have been so incompetent as to allow an anti-American propaganda song to slip into the playlist for the state dinner that Hu Jintao should never have been given in the first place. The malicious delight of the low characters of Chinese cyberspace should leave little doubt that the ChiCom propagandists knew exactly what they were doing. Now that the thing is done, I suppose the White House can’t really admit that it was pwned without exacerbating the catastrophe, but let’s not kid ourselves. China sees itself as our enemy; therefore, China — or rather, the dictatorship that temporarily rules it — is our enemy, and we need to craft our foreign and defense policies accordingly.

A leading international expert at one of China’s top universities predicts that North Korea will not improve relations with South Korea while Lee Myung-bak is still president of the south. Yan Xuetong says that’s because of Lee’s abandonment of the “Sunshine policy” of economic engagement with the isolationist Communist state and his tough approach to Pyongyang.

Yan, who is dean of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University, said this means North Korean officials will be “very patient” and will wait to engage with South Korea’s next president in two years when Lee’s term ends. [AP]

That’s funny, because I was just thinking that U.S.-China relations won’t improve much as long as China is ruled by an unaccountable, thuggish Mandarin class whose premier scholars are impervious to obvious facts and simple logic, and that the United States should wait patiently for the overthrow of its dictatorship before any great improvement in relations can be possible.