Conclusion:

Albright and Wit said the administration should come up with terms for a resumption of dialogue that the North Koreans and the U.S. can both accept. U.S. officials have said repeatedly they are open to talks, but they are demanding several preconditions that Pyongyang has repeatedly rejected.

“The North Koreans are more than happy to make concessions to start things up again, but the U.S. has shown no flexibility in addressing North Korea’s position to arrive at a starting point that both sides can be happy with,” said Albright.

“We have this reactive approach and it’s ad hoc,” Wit added. “The North Koreans aren’t taking us seriously. They feel they are in the driver’s seat here. It’s wrong to assume they are taking these steps like this Sony hack out of weakness. They are taking these steps because they feel there’s nothing we can do to them.”

And this raises an uncomfortable question for the White House. Why does a targeted cyber-hack draw a tougher response from Obama than the amassing of a small nuclear arsenal? The message it sends to Pyongyang is that they can threaten their entire region with nuclear weapons, just so long as they don’t touch Hollywood.

Unreciprocated removal of US nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in 1992, The north-South Agreement of Reconciliation, Non-aggression, and Exchanges (ARNE) (1992) (never implemented by the north), the Agreed Framework 1994, heavy fuel oil and food aid through the Arduous March 1994-1996 and beyond, the Perry Policy review and proposal 1999, the Albright visit in 2000, the Sunshine Policy, visits to the north by Kim Dae-jung (Nobel Peace Prize at the cost of millions of dollars) and Roh Moo-hyun, Four party Talks in late 1990's Six Party talks in the 2000's, removal from the state sponsored terrorism list and more are examples of efforts to engage and deal with the north Korea.  But to what end?  What good has become of any of this? Continued north Korean provocations to gain political and economic concessions and blackmail diplomacy, development of nuclear weapons, missile delivery systems, increase in asymmetric offensive military capabilities (to include not on SOF and cyber but allso Chemical weapons), while sustaining and even increasing capabilities (e.g., 300mm MRL)  of  the world's fourth largest conventional military force?  yes let's find common ground but would someone please tell me what that common ground is because what is non-negotiable for the Kim Family Regime are its vital national interests and its long term strategic aims and objectives:

Vital Interest: Survival of the Kim Family Regime at all costs (therefore it can do nothing that will undercut the legitimacy of the regime domestically which includes real economic reforms that will counter its ideology)

Strategic Aim:  reunification under Kim Family Regime control to ensure regime survival.

Strategic Objective: Split the ROK/US alliance and get US forces off the peninsula to ensure attainment of the strategic aim and vital national interest.

How does it achieve the above? - nuclear program for blackmail diplomacy and deterrence, proliferation of weapons and global illicit activities to obtain hard currency to ensure the loyalty of the elite members of the Kim Family Regime, provocations (primarily against the South) to gain political and economic concessions and as Dr. Bruce Bechtol has emphasized to us time and again:

"Provocations have had four things in common: 1) they are intentionally initiated at moments when they have the likelihood of garnering the greatest attention on the regional and perhaps even the world stage; 2) they initially appear to be incidents that are relatively small, easily contained, and quickly “resolved;” 3) they involve continuously changing tactics and techniques; and 4) North Korea denies responsibility for the event."

And Bruce has this to say about the Sony hacking incident 

With two key differences:

1.        It is carried out against an entity in the USA, NOT South Korea.

2.       It is using a new, offensive capability – thinking out of the box if you will – that North Korea’s military and intelligence services are likely to utilize on a larger scale in the future

If the north Koreans did the Sony hack then we should consider it a "confidence target" to test its capabilities and gauge the reaction of the US and international community.  From the reactions I think north Korea and other state and non-state actors see great potential in hacking US businesses (even if they are owned by a foreign company, i.e., Sony).  And other targets probably loom large especially as tensions rise or conflict erupts.

These strategies, concepts, and tactics are the foundation for everything that north Korea does and it is unlikely to deviate from its interests, aims, objectives, and tactics (though as we are seeing it will adapt the tactics).  So yes, I am all for finding common ground and would rather "jaw jaw than war war" but we had better try to understand the position of the Kim Family Regime.

As an aside one of the best deterrents of the north is this (change Kim Jong-il to the Kim Family Regime):

 Given the dangers of regime collapse and the potential for war the first imperative of the

strategy is to sustain the illusion for Kim Jong Il that his regime can survive.30 As

long as Kim Jong Il believes he will survive and have the possibility at some time

in the future to achieve reunification under his terms he will in effect be deterred

from attacking. 

30 Credit for coining the phrase “sustaining the illusion that Kim Jong Il will survive” goes

to COL Rick Gribling, Chief of UNC/CFC/USFK CJ3 Plans Division during crisis action planning

session in June 1997.

The entire paper on a long term strategy for the Korean Peninsula can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/1CWA5vm

The key to the future of the peninsula lies among the people in north Korea.  Can they change their own regime and have a leadership emerge that will seek peaceful unification with the South?  While sustaining the illusion that the regime will survive in order to deter its attacks perhaps we can try to engage the north while at the same time providing support to the nascent but emerging resistance potential among the population and 2d tier leadership in the north.  But that would require a coherent ROK/US alliance strategy and a classified one at that.

COMMENTARY / WORLD

North Korea’s nukes are much scarier than its hacks

BY JOSH ROGIN AND ELI LAKE

BLOOMBERG

DEC 26, 2014

HTTP://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/OPINION/2014/12/26/COMMENTARY/WORLD-COMMENTARY/NORTH-KOREAS-NUKES-

ARE-MUCH-SCARIER-THAN-ITS-HACKS/#.VJ1A8WAB

• 
  

NEW YORK – While the world’s attention focuses on North Korea’s cyberwar with Sony Pictures, the Hermit Kingdom is rapidly increasing its stockpile of nuclear weapons material, with real little pushback from the United States.

A new analysis of North Korea’s nuclear program by a group of top U.S. experts, led by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, estimates that North Korea could have enough material for 79 nuclear weapons by 2020.

The analysis, part of a larger project called “North Korea’s Nuclear Futures” being run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, has not been previously published.

Albright said the North Korean government is ramping up its production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, speeding toward an amount that would allow it to build enough nuclear weapons to rival other nuclear states including India, Pakistan and Israel.

“North Korea is on the verge of being able to scale up its nuclear weapons program to the level of the other major players, so it’s critical to head this off,” Albright said in an interview.

He added, “It is on the verge of deploying a nuclear arsenal that would pose not only a threat to the United States and its allies but also to China.”

According to the analysis, which included the input of a team of former government officials, nuclear experts and North Korea-watchers, the regime now has as many as four separate facilities churning out nuclear weapons material or preparing to do so.

The best-known one, at Yongbyon, has a functioning 5-megawatt plutonium reactor, a uranium enrichment grid with thousands of centrifuges and a light-water reactor that could be used for either military or civilian purposes.

The U.S. intelligence community also believes the North Koreans have a second centrifuge facility they have never acknowledged. Even if that second uranium facility is taken out of the equation, Albright’s team projects that North Korea will have enough material for 67 bombs in five years time.

The light-water reactor at Yongyon is not online yet, but it should be soon. Even if that reactor is never turned on or limited to civilian purposes, North Korea could still have 45 bombs by the time the next U.S. president is finishing up his (or her) first term.

North Korea is estimated to have 30 to 34 kg of weapons-grade plutonium now, enough for around nine nuclear weapons, depending on the size of each bomb. Last year it conducted its third nuclear weapons test.

Albright acknowledged that the secrecy of the North Korean program makes exact projections impossible and therefore his estimates all have a range to account for known unknowns, such as secret facilities. According to the detailed intelligence community budget leaked to the Washington Post in 2013 by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, North Korea’s nuclear program remains one of the hardest targets for U.S. spies as well.

But there’s no doubt about the North Korean government’s intentions, Albright said, to produce as much nuclear-weapons material as possible before it is forced to stop either by coercion or the resumption of a diplomatic negotiations with the West.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/OPINION/2014/12/26/COMMENTARY/WORLD-COMMENTARY/NORTH-KOREAS-NUKES-ARE-MUCH-SCARIER-THAN-ITS-HACKS/#.VJ1A8WAB

Excerpt:

The United States and its allies in East Asia are rightfully demanding “meaningful actions towards denuclearization” before entering into any negotiations. The North Koreans meanwhile are only offering negotiations without preconditions. The conundrum the international community is about to face in the weeks and months ahead, is to find a diplomatic solution when the political fronts are geared towards conflict.

But in a world in which cooperation is largely seen as more beneficial than confrontation, the North Korean offer is paradoxically gaining momentum with every new erupting crisis. As in all the years before, President Obama’s policy of "strategic patience" will come under intense scrutiny. Not only by those who believe that any talk is better than being silent, but also by those who seek to avert a possible military escalation.

However, as painful as it may sound the policy of "strategic patience" appears to be the only feasible way to make the North Koreans comply with their obligations to denuclearize. The South Korean government is still learning this lesson the hard way. From the tedious negotiations on reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex to the abrupt cancelling of cross-border family reunions, Seoul's policy of "trust building" with Pyongyang has been nothing but a rocky road with little to show.

I do not think the "political fronts are geared toward conflict."  None of the five parties want conflict on the Korean Peninsula.  The only country in the region that is geared for conflict is north Korea.  The ball is in the north's court.  Until it demonstrates good faith by taking concrete actions will it benefit from a return to the talks.  To reiterate the phrase is this:

 the North Korean offer is paradoxically gaining momentum with every new erupting crisis

The cycle is that as crisis erupts  certain parties want to move to talks and this just confirms and reinforces the north's blackmail diplomatic strategy: increase tension and rhetoric and conduct provocations to gain political and economic concessions.

On the other hand, I do think that strategic patience on the part of the US while backing the ROK's trustpolitik initiative is the way to go.  But the author should be also have some patience for trustpolitik – I think it will take some years for it to bear fruit. It is not a strategy that is going to bring overnight results or even results in 8 months which is how long President Park has been in office executing her policy.  

But the bottom line is that any conflict on the Peninsula will be the result of the Kim Family Regime' actions and not the ROK, US, Japan, China, or Russia.  The responsibility is solely on Kim Jong-un's shoulders.

V/R

Dave

The North Korea threat

By Stefan Soesanto - 10/17/13 05:00 PM ET

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/329133-the-north-korea-threat-

  

At a time when countries like Cuba, Myanmar, Syria and even Iran are trying to ease tensions with the United States, one country stands out by adamantly defying this positive trend. Last week, the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed in a report to parliament that the regime in North Korea has restarted its 5 MW nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. The NIS findings end months of speculation following the open-source analysis of satellite imagery by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Although clearly in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions, the nuclear restart does not really come as a surprise. Pyongyang officially announced its plan to resume operations at Yongbyon back in April, the same month when the North Korean cargo ship Chong Chon Gang set sail for Cuba to pick up 25 containers of military hardware. While the Chong Chon Gang was seized in mid-July by Panamanian authorities and has been found in violation of UN sanctions, evidence of the nuclear restart at Yongbyon has yet to make its impact on the international stage.

The situation regarding North Korea is getting worse by the day, whether it is the nation’s nuclear program, advances in missile technology, cyber warfare operations or its horrible human rights record. But Pyongyang has proven itself to be a formidable opponent and there is little evidence to suggest that additional UN sanctions will bring the North Koreans to their knees. Thus the question becomes: Where do we go from here?

After more than two decades of post-cold war tit-for-tat, relations between Washington and Pyongyang are at an all-time low. Ironically, within this non-cooperative environment of “strategic patience”, intelligence gathering and public diplomacy has been unwillingly outsourced to non-governmental organizations and people like former NBA star Dennis Rodman. Something has indeed gone terribly wrong when the only country in the world that is openly threatening the United States with nuclear warfare is not being taken seriously.

While there is a reasonable consensus within the Obama administration to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Six-Party Talks, there is also currently no political incentive within Washington to make any concessions towards Pyongyang. At this critical juncture in time, nobody is going anywhere.

The United States and its allies in East Asia are rightfully demanding “meaningful actions towards denuclearization” before entering into any negotiations. The North Koreans meanwhile are only offering negotiations without preconditions. The conundrum the international community is about to face in the weeks and months ahead, is to find a diplomatic solution when the political fronts are geared towards conflict.

(Continued at the link below)

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/329133-the-north-korea-threat-

Kerry Says Any Talks Rely on Steps by North Korea

Unfortunately if the first move is the requirement for the north to abandon its nuclear program there will never be any talks.  The north will never give up its nuclear weapons and will probably never again agree to even talk about giving them up. Despite statements in the international community to never recognize the north as a nuclear power from here on out the north will very likely try to act like a nuclear power and demand that it be treated as one.  The only way it might come to the table is if there is an offer of some kind of strategic arms limitation talks in which nuclear power negotiate on an even playing field (in the north's calculation of course because as we all know the north has about as much equivalent nuclear power as a single blade of grass on that level playing field – but it continues to be able to hold the region hostage to its diplomatic nuclear blackmail).

V/R

Dave

Kerry Says Any Talks Rely on Steps by North Korea

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/world/asia/kerry-says-any-talks-rely-on-steps-by-north-korea.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

TOKYO — Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that the United States was prepared to reach out to Kim Jong-un of North Korea if he made the first move to abandon hisnuclear weapons program.

“We need the appropriate moment, appropriate circumstance,” Mr. Kerry told reporters in Tokyo.

While he did not say specifically what steps would be needed, according to the long-standing United States position they might include a public commitment to denuclearization and such measures as halting the production of nuclear material, refraining from testing missiles and ceasing threats to attack its neighbors.

Over the past week, there has been considerable attention on the United States’ vows to militarily defend its Asian allies and its warning that North Korea should forgo a test firing a Musudan medium-range missile.

But the United States has also canceled military exercises and toned down its statements in recent weeks to try to create an atmosphere in which talks with North Korea might begin, a theme that Mr. Kerry emphasized on Sunday.

“What we really ought to be talking about is the possibility of peace,” he said in a joint news conference on Sunday with Fumio Kishid, Japan’s foreign minister. “And I think there are those possibilities.”

Sketching out his approach in his meeting later in the day with reporters, Mr. Kerry said that before talks could begin, North Korea needed to take tangible steps to demonstrate that it was serious about denuclearization.

But it seemed unlikely that that precondition for talks would be met by North Korea, given the country’s announcements that it considers itself to be a nuclear state and its dedication to a “military-first” stance that channels resources to its armed forces.

The Obama administration has been willing to conduct direct talks with Iranian officials and sought early in Mr. Obama’s first term to forge a constructive relationship with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. But the White House, in a policy that some have called strategic patience, has remained unwilling to meet openly with top North Korean officials unless they first committed to denuclearization.

Mr. Kerry indicated there were some circumstances in which he could imagine sending a representative to talk to North Korean leaders or engaging directly with the North Koreans through a diplomatic back channel.

“It may be that somebody will be asked to sit down,” he said.

“I am open personally to exploring other avenues; I particularly want to hear what the Chinese have to say,” Mr. Kerry said. “I am not going to be so stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is flagrantly wasted.”

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/world/asia/kerry-says-any-talks-rely-on-steps-by-north-korea.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff.

The South Koreans should make the Brits proud as they do demonstrate the adage: "Stay calm and carry on."

I think Dr. Lankov is partly right.  Yes the north wants to be noticed and yes provocations are always about gaining political and economic concessions, but I also think that a big part of this strategy is to confirm that they are a nuclear power in order to change the dynamics of all future negotiations so that they can negotiate as a nuclear power rather than as a nation that has a nascent or developing nuclear program. 

Call their bluff, but it must be done from a position of ROK/US Alliance military strength.  We cannot afford to allow the perception that there is any weakness in the Alliance.

V/R
Dave

April 9, 2013

Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff.

By ANDREI LANKOV

SEOUL, South Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/opinion/stay-cool-call-north-koreas-bluff.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

NORTH KOREA is a tiny dictatorship with a bankrupt economy, but its leaders are remarkably adept at manipulating global public opinion. In recent weeks, we have been exposed to yet another brilliant example of their skill.

Scores of foreign journalists have been dispatched to Seoul to report on the growing tensions between the two Koreas and the possibility of war. Upon arrival, though, it is difficult for them to find any South Koreans who are panic-stricken. In fact, most people in Seoul don’t care about the North’s belligerent statements: the farther one is from the Korean Peninsula, the more one will find people worried about the recent developments here.

The average South Korean’s calm indifference is understandable: he or she has been through similar “crises” many times. By now South Koreans understand Pyongyang’s logic and know North Korea is highly unlikely to make good on its gothic threats.

People who talk about an imminent possibility of war seldom pose this question: What would North Korea’s leadership get from unleashing a war that they are likely to lose in weeks, if not days? Even if they managed to strike Japan, the United States or South Korea with nuclear weapons — a big if, given that they do not have a reliable delivery system — they could not save themselves from ultimate defeat. On the contrary, the use of nuclear or other terror weapons would be certain to invite overwhelming retaliation, delivering North Korea’s decision makers to a fiery oblivion.

Suggestions that those leaders are irrational and their decisions unfathomable are remarkably shallow. North Korea is not a theocracy led by zealots who preach the rewards of the afterlife.

In fact, there are no good reasons to think that Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s young dictator, would want to commit suicide; he is known for his love of basketball, pizza and other pleasures of being alive. The same logic applies to his advisers, old survivors in the byzantine world of North Korean politics who love expensive cars and good brandy.

Moreover, there is almost nothing particularly unusual in the recent developments. In the last two decades, North Korea has on various occasions conducted highly provocative missile and nuclear tests and promised to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. Now it has declared its withdrawal from the 1953 armistice agreement that ended fighting in the Korean War but not the war itself. It has denounced American and South Korean military exercises as an act of war. And on Tuesday, North Korea told foreigners in the South to look for shelter or consider evacuating because the Korean Peninsula could soon be engulfed in nuclear war. This time, the tune is being played louder, but that is the only real change.

A closer look at North Korean history reveals what Pyongyang’s leaders really want their near-farcical belligerence to achieve — a reminder to the world that North Korea exists, and an impression abroad that its leaders are irrational and unpredictable. The scary impressions are important to North Korea because for the last two decades its policy has been, above all, a brilliant exercise in diplomatic blackmail. And blackmail usually works better when the practitioners are seen as irrational and unpredictable.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/opinion/stay-cool-call-north-koreas-bluff.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

The Upside of Giving In to North Korea’s Blackmail

There is no upside of giving in.  I reject that assessment that it is the US military power that destabilizes the situation because that is an "unsettling" factor in the equation with north Korea.  The north may be "unsettled"  but any weakness of the ROK/US Alliance and perceived reduction of the commitment of the US to the Alliance will not result in reducing tensions but will instead affirm the north's strategy and will in fact increase north Korean belligerence because they will assess they are succeeding.  

V/R

Dave

The Upside of Giving In to North Korea’s Blackmail

By the Editors Apr 9, 2013 6:08 PM ET

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/the-upside-of-giving-in-to-north-korea-s-blackmail.html

With its provocation-a-day strategy, North Korea has almost exhausted the news media’s capacity for stories about the “ratcheting up” of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Here’s some news from the North, though, that you may not have heard: In recent meetings, the ruling Korean Workers’ Party elected Pak Pong Ju, an economic reformer, to its Political Bureau, which steers political, policy and personnel decisions, and downgraded the role of the military by reducing its representation. Subsequently, Pak was made Cabinet premier. On April 5, even as North Korea warned foreign diplomats that it couldn’t guarantee their safety, the front page of Rodong Sinmun, the country’s newspaper of record, was dominated by headlines urging faster economic development. News outlets that rely on clandestine reports from inside North Korea suggest that preparing for war has given way to preparing for spring planting.

Of course, just because Kim Jong Un has no interest in starting a war doesn’t mean that he can’t stage some dangerous incident -- all designed to get the U.S. to talk to him. He wants that dialogue in order to seek relief from international sanctions, to acquire the aid that his country desperately needs and, not least, to secure his domestic political standing with a high-profile public-relations victory.

The first task of the U.S. is to respond to any actual military provocation in a firm but measured way. President Barack Obama has so far wisely resisted engaging in Kim’s war of words, and has appropriately reinforced U.S. military assets in the region.

Yet as some analysts have pointed out, the dominant military position of the U.S. is itself an unsettling factor on the Korean Peninsula. While the North’s artillery and rockets could inflict a horrific toll on the 10 million-plus South Koreans living in Seoul, the government in Pyongyang knows it would quickly lose any conventional conflict: The prospect of impending defeat could well encourage Kim to go nuclear. For that reason, the U.S. should persuade South Korea to refrain from further loose talk about retaliatory targeting of the North’s “command and control” facilities. Likewise, more publicly announced sorties over South Korea by U.S. B-2 bombers may be stirring, but they are not stabilizing.

Some proponents of a “get tough” approach with North Korea dream that isolating the regime will force its sudden collapse. They should be careful what they wish for. The inevitable humanitarian chaos of such an outcome would generate huge economic costs. Before reunification, West Germany was two to three times richer than the East. By contrast, South Koreans are somewhere between 15 and 40 times richer than their counterparts to the north. As one expert notes, estimates of the cost of reunification range from $200 billion to $5 trillion -- or almost five times South Korea’s gross domestic product.

Most South Koreans are in no hurry to pay that price. As for China and Russia, the prospect of a united, pro-U.S. Korea at their borders is far less appealing than some version of the status quo. Notwithstanding Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent veiled warnings to Pyongyang, officials in Beijing (and Moscow) will do only the minimum necessary to keep the peace.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/the-upside-of-giving-in-to-north-korea-s-blackmail.html

2 Americans Are Advised Not to Visit North Korea

I wonder what they think they can really achieve?  Perhaps they will be able to help get Mr. Bae released.  The "ransom" for his release could be the visit in order to provide international and domestic legitimacy as the perception of the visit will be spun but the north Korean propagandists as that of Americans kowtowing and paying tribute to the great Kim Jong-un.  They will be played and used by the regime.  

And they also cause friction for ROK-US policymakers because despite the fact that there are north Koreans who study the west and think they understand US politics and the like, it is very likely that the regime cannot fathom that these two could come without some official behind the scenes sanction by the government because in the mirror image analysis the regime could not imagine such prominent people doing something on their own that would go against the desires of the government.  And statements from State and other officials would only be viewed as disinformation because that is how the regime would operate so they would expect such statements to made as a matter of routine.  So whatever they say (especially Richardson) will be assessed as a message from the Administration.
V/R
Dave

January 3, 2013

2 Americans Are Advised Not to Visit North Korea

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/world/asia/bill-richardson-and-googles-eric-schmidt-are-advised-not-to-visit-north-korea.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&seid=auto&_r=0&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Thursday that it had advised against a visit to North Korea by the former governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, and Google’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt.

Neither Mr. Richardson nor Mr. Schmidt have publicly discussed reports of the possibility of such a trip or its purpose. The two men could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Victor D. Cha, an expert on North Korea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the visit might aid discussion of a humanitarian issue of concern to the United States: North Korea’s detention last month of a naturalized American citizen born in South Korea.

North Korea identified the man as Bae Jun-ho, and human rights activists as Kenneth Bae, 44. A report by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said, without elaborating, that Mr. Bae had admitted to committing “hostile acts against the republic,” a crime punishable by a year in prison. The human rights activists said Mr. Bae had run a travel company that specialized in taking tourists and prospective investors to North Korea.

His arrest came shortly after North Korea launched a long-range rocket that it insisted was part of a peaceful space program. But the United States asserts that the real purpose is to develop a ballistic missile as part of a military program. “Frankly, we don’t think the timing of this is particularly helpful,” the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said Thursday about talk of a trip by Mr. Richardson and Mr. Schmidt. “They are well aware of our views.”
(Continued at the link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/world/asia/bill-richardson-and-googles-eric-schmidt-are-advised-not-to-visit-north-korea.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&seid=auto&_r=0&pagewanted=print

Cheonan Sinking 'Was Revenge for Refusing Aid'

While some will counsel to take this with a grain of salt, I think it is illustrative of north Korea diplomacy (or more perhaps appropriately "blackmail diplomacy") and I would not be surprised if it were true (we will not know until after unification and we can examine the archives whether the decision to sink the Cheonan was in response to the ROK denying to pay extortion money to the north).  But I think we can believe that the north asked for the resources as payment for a summit meeting.

V/R
Dave

Cheonan Sinking 'Was Revenge for Refusing Aid'

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/01/03/2013010301265.html

North Korea sank the Navy corvette Cheonan and shelled Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 in protest against Seoul's refusal to provide economic aid, a senior Cheong Wa Dae official here claimed Wednesday.

The official told reporters the Lee Myung-bak administration attempted several times to arrange a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il but was unwilling to pay the price the North demanded. Incensed, the North then sank the ship and shelled the island.

The claims from the outgoing administration came a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un struck an unusually conciliatory note in his New Year's address and are being read as a warning for the incoming government not to be taken in by his rhetoric.

◆ What Price a Summit?

"The Lee administration has met several times with North Korean officials to discuss a summit," the official said. "But North Korea demanded tens of thousands of tons of rice and fertilizer in exchange and we refused."

North Korea wanted some US$500-600 million worth of rice and fertilizer aid, he said. The official did not say whether Pyongyang also wanted cash.

"The watershed moment in inter-Korean relations was the sinking of the Cheonan in March of 2010," he said. Talks were held even after the sinking, but North Korea refused to admit it was behind the attack, the official added.

◆ Show of Protest

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/01/03/2013010301265.html