Seoul - Riding on the crest of a thaw in its relations with
the United States, communist North Korea engaged this year in a
flurry of diplomatic activities.
The moves raised expectations in Washington and Seoul as well as
in other capitals of the region that the poor, but nuclear-armed,
country is moving to come out of its long an obscure isolation.
Multilateral efforts aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons
programme have also helped to open a new path of dialogue between
Pyongyang and the outside world.
The constant support of China, North Korea's traditional ally, for
the efforts was seen as being decisive to find a breakthrough in the
so-called six-party talks.
'In the past, North Korea often spoke of their isolation as a
great benefit for their country,' the US envoy for the nuclear talks
with North Korea, Christopher Hill, told reporters in early November.
'I think they've understood it now as something that is actually
harming them, and that the best-case scenario for what they're doing
is to believe that perhaps it is part of an overall effort to open
up,' he said.
Following the agreements at the six-party talks - which include
both Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia - North Korea allowed a
group of nuclear experts from the US into the country.
Their task is to observe and to cooperate with North Korean
technicians to disable the key facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear
complex, located north of Pyongyang, until the end of this year.
North Korea also said it would disclose its whole nuclear programme
until then.
As part of its intensifying diplomatic activities, North Korea
sent senior officials to countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, the
Middle East as well as Russia in recent months.
This year, Pyongyang restored diplomatic ties with Myanmar and
Nicaragua. It has also established diplomatic relations with five
other countries, including Montenegro, the United Arab Emirates,
Swaziland, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
North Korea also appears to have strong interest in Vietnam's
economic development. Vietnamese communist party leader Nong Duc Manh
visited North Korea in October, the first-ever visit in 50 years by a
top Vietnamese leader to the North.
Later the same month, North Korea's Prime Minister Kim Yong Il
visited Vietnam to sign agreements on various cooperation projects
between the two sides. The visits led to speculations whether North
Korea considers following the Vietnamese way of reforms.
New tones of engagement with the international community have even
emerged from North Korea's usual hard-line official media.
The Workers' Party daily Rodong Sinmun, criticizing isolationism,
said in an article published at the end of October: 'The time has
passed when we had to carry out production and construction with our
bare hands. Korea lives in the world ... We disregarded modern
science and technology and resort to past experiences. But that has
nothing to do with today's self-reliance efforts.'
Above all, the summit between the leaders of North and South Korea
in October - only the second such meeting ever - raised the prospect
that the Cold War on the Korean peninsula could finally come to an
end.
Many experts believe that international pressure to give up its
nuclear programme and its dilapidated economy leaves North Korea
little choice to open itself to the outside world and seek investment
from the wealthy neighbour in the South.
At their summit last month South and North Korea agreed on a
package of new joint businesses and projects, including a joint
programme to modernize a highway and a railway line in the North as
well as building a shipyard in the country.
North Korea also agreed to expand its tourism business with South
Korea. It will, for the first time, allow direct flights from Seoul
to Paekdu Mountain at the border to China.
Uncertainties, however, still exist on whether the latest efforts
to bring about a permanent détente and openness in North Korea will
succeed.
'North Korea has shown contradictory signs,' Park Hyeong Jung, a
researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification
in Seoul, said.
On one hand, North Korea clearly shows that it wants to improve
its relations with other countries, he says. 'On the other hand,
there is an internal fear of opening up.'
He cited reports from South Korean groups, including
non-governmental organizations with steady contacts in the North,
which indicate moves that go the opposite direction.
According to those reports, for example, the North Korean
leadership tightened its crackdown on South Korean videos and cell
phones spreading throughout the country.
'The government sent special groups to crack down on 'any
anti-socialist' activity,' Park says.
Park thinks that not everyone in North Korea agrees that openness
is a good idea and that the organizations within the regime follow
different objectives.
He said that the ambitious inter-Korean economic projects could be
started and further expanded only in accordance with the progress in
North Korea's change in economic policy and institutions, which
should promote economic growth and attract foreign capital.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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