By Ankit Panda
North Korea’s ‘quietness’ tells us little about its intentions or of the success of U.S. diplomacy.
This Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry used an odd measure of assessing diplomatic success with North Korea. He implied that the fact that North Korea is “quieter” now than it was last year implies that the United States has made some progress with Northeast Asia’s irascible rogue state: “I just came back from China, where we are engaged with the Chinese in dealing with North Korea. And you will notice, since the visit last year, North Korea has been quieter. We haven’t done what we want to do yet with respect to the denuclearization, but we are working on that and moving forward.”
Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the extent to which North Korea is silent — or loud for that matter — tells us anything about where it stands diplomatically with its foes and what its short-term intentions are. Kerry’s remarks were likely inspired by the sharp uptick in violent rhetoric emanating from the North last spring. Back then, North Korea was threatening all-out war, an end to the 1953 ceasefire, and promising the annihilation of the South. Pyongyang additionally threatened to nullify the joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; it later also threatened to restart its Yongbyon nuclear complex. This was also roughly the time when Pyongyang threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States. Some of these threats were inspired by the 2013 U.S.-South Korea annual Foal Eagle exercise. The rest of them were arbitrary, designed to help Kim Jong-un consolidate power and appear strong.
Read the full story at The Diplomat