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| North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong, left, walks as North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-guk sees him off at the airport in Pyongyang, Monday. Ri left for the ministerial meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Malaysia. / AP-Yonhap |
By Yi Whan-woo
The foreign ministers from six countries involved in the North Korea denuclearization talks will gather in Kuala Lumpur this week for a regional security forum.
It will be their first meeting since the landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and U.S.-led world powers on July 14.
During the annual ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) scheduled from Wednesday to Thursday, the foreign ministers are expected to engage in heated diplomacy over how to handle North Korea.
The two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia are among the 26 countries participating in the forum to promote security in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Monday.
Only the ARF will involve all members of the dormant talks on North Korea's nuclear program among a series of ASEAN-related ministerial meetings that are scheduled to take place concurrently between Wednesday and Thursday in the Malaysian capital.
The ARF this year comes after Iran and the five members of the U.N. Security Council ― the U.S., the U.K. France, China and Russia ― plus Germany ― agreed in Vienna to curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Speculation is growing whether Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will be able to hold a six-way dialogue with Pyongyang's Ri Su-yong, Washington's John Kerry, Beijing's Wang Yi, Tokyo's Fumio Kishida and Moscow's Sergey Lavrov to persuade North Korea to follow Iran's example.
International politics observers played down such speculation, saying North Korea was different from Iran in their nuclear ambitions.
Pyongyang carried out three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2012 while Tehran had none. The isolationist state also has purportedly claimed it is capable of developing various nuclear devices, including miniaturized warheads that can be mounted on ballistic missiles.
"I highly doubt if the foreign ministers from the six-party talks nations will be brought to the same table," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. "North Korea has made clear it will not give up its nuclear weapons and Ri is likely to reject possible offers."
Yang did not rule out the possibility that Yun and Ri might meet one-on-one, but stressed that such a meeting would be "nothing more than an exchange of greetings."
"The only foreign minister that Ri is likely to meet among those at the member six-party talks is Wang, considering that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping have shown signs of improving bilateral ties recently."
Park Won-gon, an international studies professor at Handong University, agreed.
"The two Koreas have not been active in improving their ties at government-level this year," he said. "And their foreign ministers will do the same in Kuala Lumpur."
He also said the 26 participating countries at the ARF would focus more on China's growing military presence in the South China Sea rather than North Korea's nuclear program.
The territorial dispute in the South China Sea involves China and several ASEAN members, such as Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The U.S. has been urging its allies to join in multinational efforts to prevent China from possible military provocations.
Yun will leave for Malaysia, Tuesday, to attend all five ASEAN-related foreign ministerial meetings. These include a South Korea-ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting, South Korea-Mekong Foreign Ministers' Meeting, ASEAN+3 (South Korea, China, Japan) Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the East Asia Summit (EAS), a foreign ministerial-level dialogue among 18 countries in the region.
