Will Koreas See Big Bang This Year?

North Korea's announcement Monday that the United States has decided to remove the communist country from the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism reinforced the prediction by the top U.S. envoy in Seoul: a big bang is to happen to the Korean Peninsula next year.

U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said late last month that if a tangible result comes regarding North Korea's nuclear issue within this year, a ``big-bang'' transformation beyond many taboos will be possible next year.

What the ambassador meant by the big bang is ultimately the normalization of the Washington-Pyongyang relations and the legal end of the Korean War by the introduction of Peace Treaty on the Korean Peninsula.

The drastic change in the relations between the United States and North Korea was expected Sunday when North Korea agreed to make a full declaration of all its nuclear programs and disable them by the end of this year.

The agreement came in a two-day bilateral meeting between the two countries in Geneva, reminiscent of the Geneva Agreed Framework in 1994, which ended the first North Korean nuclear crisis.

The United had suggested the deadline of 2007 and North Korea will implement the declaration and the disablement in return for aid and security guarantees, particularly normalization of the relations.

Actually, the declaration and the disablement comprise a second phase of the nuclear disarmament of the six-party talks as North Korea already has done the first phase of the shutdown of a key nuclear reactor in Yongbyon under an agreement reached on Feb. 13.

So the first leg of a roadmap to the ultimate big bang would be the removal of North Korea from the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism as the United States already suggested. And its looks quite feasible in the near future.

The United States has been considering removing North Korea from the list since February when North Korea pledged to abandon nuclear ambitions, according to Christopher Hill, U.S. top negotiator to the six-party talks, on Tuesday.

Hill made the remark while meeting with his South Korean counterpart Song Min-soon on the sidelines of the annual ministerial meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Sydney.

The next step would be North Korea's declaration of the nuclear program and disablement of them within this year, whose concrete timetable will be discussed in the upcoming six-party talks slated for mid-September in Beijing.

The two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan are involved in the multilateral talks aimed ending the North's nuclear ambitions.

As Vershbow said if the first two steps are completed by the end of this year, the next year is highly likely to see big changes. After the denuclearization in North Korea, the United States will have to give promised benefits to North Korea such as normalization of their relations and the legal end of the Korean War.

By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter

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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Washington Post Analysis: N. Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/14/AR200610...

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why do you think that the removal of North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism would have such powerful results?

Do you think that the United States’ involvement in the Korean War and the numerous negotiations up until this point have helped the situation between North and South Korea or made things worse?

Why did the Untied States get involved in Korea’s civil war?

Why do you think the author calls the improvement in North - South - US relations a 'big bang'?
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