N.K.: Nuclear Test Is Inebbitable!

Chung Dong-Young, call your office:

A Japanese professor, after a meeting with a senior North Korean official last week, quoted the official as saying that a nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang was unavoidable. Yasuhiko Yoshida, a professor at the Osaka University of Economics and Law, told the JoongAng Ilbo that Pak Hyon-jae, deputy head of the North’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace, told a Japanese delegation on a visit to Pyongyang that “a plutonium-based nuclear test is unavoidable” and that the world “would soon know about a nuclear test.”

North Korea’s designated nuclear saber-rattler works for the “Institute for Disarmament and Peace?” “Ministry of Peace” was already taken, apparently. So just who is this Yoshida fellow?

Mr. Yoshida has visited the North seven times and has also worked as an official with the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said his latest trip was to deliver medicine worth 10 million won ($10,000) donated by Japanese civic groups. He was in Pyongyang for a week. Mr. Yoshida added that Mr. Pak didn’t answer a question on how many nuclear weapons Pyongyang had, but that he repeated that Washington must drop its hostile policy toward the North before the six-party talks can resume.

Among his views, Yoshida was critical of a decision by the Japanese government to allow five Japanese abductees to stay in Japan instead of forcing them back onto a plane to Pyongyang as (astonishingly) agreed, which would have been a second negotiated abduction (would Yoshida have agreed with this view if his daughter was one of the five?). He also considers it “hard-line” for the U.S. to expect North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, a demand to which he adds the qualifier “unilaterally” despite the fact that Pyongyang negotiated repeated agreements not to have a nuclear program in the first place. We’ve learned something nothing new about the IAEA. A Japanese Selig Harrison was one of its key staffers.

But does this mean that Seoul is finally taking this situation seriously?

Reacting, a South Korean diplomatic source cast doubt on the statement, saying yesterday that North Korea had from time to time used Mr. Pak as a messenger to the outside world, and that the professor’s visit was a scheme set up by Pyongyang.

I’m firmly convinced that if a company of North Korean T-72s ran right through the front gate of the Blue House and the crews shot their way up to the roof and raised their flag, South Korea’s entire NSC would be dragged off to rehabilitative labor calling it a “cultural exchange.” In fairness, however, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon did take a slightly harder and more realistic tone:

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon has warned the North against conducting a nuclear test, saying that doing so “would not be recommended for North Korea’s future.”

The comments came amid top-level efforts over the weekend to defuse the crisis, with President Roh Moo-hyun meeting President Hu Jintao of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia at ceremonies in Moscow to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II.

I include this comment to note one apparent and conspicuous absence. I really don’t know what to make of it all, given that there have been numerous recent reports of Kim sightings, which means nothing unless someone verifies that one of them was recent. Even then, there’s the question of whether mysterious events in the North of late may mean that Kim has been forced to share power or that we’re seeing some sort of rolling coup. Comments / e-mails that add fact to the speculation would be most appreciated.