N. Korea says it will resume talks but adds pressure with launches
South Korean watchdog finds no foul play in waitresses’ defection
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea fired a new round of short-range projectiles on Tuesday, South Korean officials said, only hours after it signaled a new willingness to resume stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.
The launches were detected early in the morning by the South Korean military, which said they appeared to be short-range projectiles.
The launches came hours after Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said in a statement carried by state media that North Korea was willing to have “comprehensive discussions” with the US in late September at a time and place to be agreed.
Choe warned that the United States needed to present a new approach or the talks could fall apart again. A US State Department spokeswoman said she did not have any talks to announce at that time.
Shares of South Korean construction firms with exposure to North Korea surged after the announcement that North Korea was willing to restart talks with the United States and continued to gain despite the latest launches.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas in June and agreed to restart working-level negotiations that had been stalled since an unsuccessful second summit between the two leaders in Vietnam in February.
Since the DMZ meeting, however, American officials said their attempts to resume talks had gone unanswered. North Korea has also conducted at least eight test launches since then, usually with multiple missiles each time.
“All of these acts by North Korea that escalate tensions do not help efforts to ease tension on the Korean peninsula, and we reiterate our calls for an immediate halt,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The US special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, spoke by telephone with his South Korean counterpart, Lee Do-hoon, on Tuesday morning, South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Biegun has led working-level talks with North Korea. He discussed with Lee how to make substantive progress on denuclearisation and peace, according to the ministry, which did not mention Choe’s comments or the latest launches.
While analysts said North Korea conducts missile tests for a range of purposes, including technical development and reassurance for the defense establishment, Tuesday’s launches appeared to have been timed to send a message to Washington.
The launches were probably the latest case of Kim turning to missile tests as diplomatic signaling, said Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.
“Far be it from me to get inside Kim’s head, but the simplest answer may be the most accurate: North Korea is demonstrating what will happen if the US doesn’t come to the table with realistic proposals,” he said.
Trump has played down previous tests this year, saying he did not believe short-range missiles violated any agreements.
Other officials, including US National Security Advisor John Bolton, have said even short-range launches by North Korea are banned under UN resolutions.
North Korea declared last year a self-imposed moratorium on tests of nuclear weapons as well as launches of its long-range intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“Going by what they’ve said so far, they’re not too concerned about effects on talks with the US,” said Joshua Pollack, a North Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
“Trump has given them a pass on short-range missiles,” he said. “Instead, they have indicated their displeasure with Seoul.”
North Korea has said its development of new weapons aims to counter military threats and offensive pressures against its security, including joint military exercises by the US and South Korea and the arrival of new stealth fighter aircraft in the South.
Meanwhile, an investigation by South Korea’s human rights watchdog found no evidence the country’s spy agency tricked or coerced a dozen North Korean restaurant workers into defecting in 2016, as some have alleged, documents reviewed by Reuters showed on Tuesday.
Lawyers for some of the women said they would seek to challenge the findings in court, setting up a potential legal fight over a saga that has complicated efforts to improve relations between the two Koreas.
The group’s defection was one of the largest known cases of its kind, and the South Korean government’s decision to publicize it broke with long-held practice that it does not identify defectors on safety and privacy grounds.
Since last year the National Human Rights Commission of Korea has been investigating whether the 12 waitresses had wanted come to the South, after at least three of them said they were pressured by South Korean intelligence agents.
The 12 had worked at a North Korean restaurant in China, and arrived with their restaurant manager in the South via Malaysia in April 2016. Pyongyang said they were abducted, while Seoul has said the workers defected of their own free will.