(News Focus) N. Korea seeks multiple gains through border talks with U.N.

By Sam Kim
SEOUL, March 5 (Yonhap) -- Holding rare military talks with the U.S.-led U.N.
command, North Korea apparently seeks to test Seoul-Washington ties, prop up its
internal leadership and seize the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama,
analysts said Thursday.
North Korea is engaged this week in a series of military meetings with U.S.
officials from the U.N. command at the borderline village of Panmunjom that
straddles the divided Koreas.
The Monday meeting -- the first general-grade encounter in over six years --
lasted only half an hour, with the North Korean side demanding that South Korea
and the U.S. cancel their upcoming Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise.
The joint annual drill, set for March 9-20, will test the abilities of the allies
to quickly reinforce frontline forces should North Korea attack. Pyongyang
routinely brands it as a precursor to invasion.
The border talks will continue on Friday, with U.S. Maj. Gen. Johnny Weida
leading the U.N. delegation that will also include South Korean, British and New
Zealand officials.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, essentially forming the
only forces of the U.N. command that monitors the cease-fire that ended the
1950-53 Korean War.
"The (North's) strategic goal is still the same: drive a wedge between Seoul and
Washington and use their contradictions to extract more concessions," Andrei
Lankov, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Kookmin University, said in an email.
North Korea, which recently scrapped all inter-Korean military agreements, has
cut off dialogue with the South and warned of an armed clash near a western sea
border where battles turned deadly twice in the past decade.
It accuses South Korean President Lee Myung-bak of denigrating cross-border ties
by tying reconciliation to North Korean efforts to denuclearize under an
international agreement.
Despite the frayed inter-Korean ties, North Korea has kept generally silent about
Obama who took office in January professing a departure from the apparent
unilateralism of the Bush government.
"Right now, they hope that the Obama administration will be more amiable to their
demands, so they can ignore and push aside the South Korean government, while
extracting aid from the U.S.," said Lankov, a Russian who studied at Pyongyang's
top university.
Obama, weighed down by a lengthy list of Middle East and economic issues, has yet
to fully unveil his North Korea stance even though the communist state appears to
be preparing to test-fire a ballistic missile capable of hitting Alaska.
Pyongyang and Washington also remain deadlocked in multilateral
aid-for-denuclearization talks as the North refuses to carry out a U.S. proposal
aimed at inspecting its past nuclear activities.
Ryoo Khil-jae, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul,
said the border talks appear to be a well-timed propaganda move on North Korea's
part.
"We must note that they coincide with other events, such as the preparations to
launch" what North Korea claims is a communications satellite, Ryoo said.
North Korea set the stage for the talks when it condemned the U.S. over the
weekend, accusing it of violating an armistice agreement by provoking at the
heavily armed inter-Korean border, Ryoo said. The U.S. says it has only conducted
routine monitoring activities.
"The protest was a pretext for the talks, all part of North Korean efforts to
grab Obama's attention," he said.
Yang Moo-jin, an analyst at the same Seoul institution, said North Korea seems to
use the meetings to "heap blame on South Korea and the U.S. for the heightened
tensions" on the peninsula.
He also noted the talks come just before North Korea holds its rubber-stamp
elections on Sunday, during which its leader Kim Jong-il is certain to reassert
his power after an apparent stroke last year.
"Tensions help consolidate a leadership," Yang said, adding Pyongyang has played
up external threats to bolster the unity of its regime supported by 1.2 million
troops.
North Korea routinely demands the U.N. command be disbanded, arguing it serves as
a cover for U.S. plans for invasion. It has also escalated its arguments that the
U.S. has secretly deployed nuclear weapons to threaten it.
"The Friday meeting shouldn't take much longer than the Monday one," Yang said,
dismissing the likelihood of any breakthrough agreement because the talks are
mainly aimed at shoring up the North Korean leadership internally.
samkim@yna.co.kr
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