Analysis: North Korea's epic drama - stage now set for next act

 Reuters/Reuters - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (2nd R) points during a military ceremony in this still image taken from video footage released on April 25, 2013, by the North's state-run television KRT. REUTERS/KRT via Reuters TV

By David Chance and Paul Eckert

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If North Korea's bellicose rhetoric threatening the United States and South Korea with nuclear war was aimed at dragging Washington to the negotiating table, it has likely failed.

Pyongyang may once again feel it needs to up the ante.

Two months of shrill threats following the North's nuclear test in February appeared at times to drag the Korean peninsula close to war as its young leader celebrated a year in power with a fusillade of verbal aggression that has now died down.

North Korea has made it clear it will not talk unless its right to a nuclear deterrent - its "treasured sword" - is recognized by the United States, while Washington insists any talks would be conditional on denuclearization.

That may lead to Pyongyang staging a new long-range rocket launch - which critics say is designed to prove missile technology - or a fourth nuclear test, or a small-scale military confrontation with South Korea in a bid to force talks and perhaps split Seoul from Washington.
"The difference in positions between the United States and North Korea is greater than ever," said Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's former national security advisor who left office in February and took part in framing U.N. sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear test that month.
Chun took part in meetings with North Korean negotiators as part of "six-party talks", a series that ran from 2003 among the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia that were aimed at stemming the North's progress towards a nuclear bomb. He participated in talks in 2006 and in 2008, the last round.
The North has said it wants the United States to sign a formal peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War, an end to U.N. sanctions and a pledge from Washington and Seoul not to attack it, as well as nuclear recognition.
"It has become much more difficult to seek common ground and find the right conditions for talks," said Chun, referring to the preconditions set out by Pyongyang.
North Korea has a long history of spurning engagement and trust-building measures. During the six-party talks, it agreed to abandon all of its nuclear weapons programs in 2005, only to stage nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 as well as this year.
As recently as last year, it said it would allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, not launch any long-range rockets and go back to talks in exchange for U.S. food aid.

Just a few weeks later as Kim Jong-un formally took power, it undertook another rocket launch, scuppering the deal.

The lack of trust and verification means that once bitten, President Barack Obama is unlikely to fall for a second North Korean ploy, especially after crude propaganda films depicted the United States in flames from a North Korean attack.

"Because it is North Korea, the decision goes all the way to the Oval Office and I just don't see President Obama wanting to make any investment in this," said Victor Cha, formerly President George W. Bush's top advisor on North Korean affairs.
CHINA CARD?
Beijing is North Korea's one ally and could provide a route back into talks, although it too has expressed its frustration with the North's young leader.
When Kim Jong-un took office, there were hopes he would break with his father's push for nuclear weapons and embark on Chinese-style economic reforms.
But a year later, the young leader has still not paid a visit to Beijing. And instead of reforming, he has spent the past year purging the military and shuffling his close advisors. He has now staged two long-range rocket launches and one nuclear test.
"China is not very happy with Kim Jong-un for creating trouble," a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said.
"Kim Jong-un has been testing his control over the military through mobilization, but he overdid it."
Despite Beijing's displeasure, the young Kim may feel he has little more to lose.
Most analysts say that despite agreeing to sanctions on North Korea after February's nuclear test, Beijing will not economically strangle a client state that provides a buffer between it and U.S. forces stationed in South Korea.
South Korea's new President Park Geun-hye will meet Obama in Washington on May 7, providing the North with something it could use as another leverage point for a missile launch, nuclear test or other show of military strength.
North Korea carried out its February nuclear test just as Park was about to take office and as new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry took up his post. The test also came at around the time of leadership transitions in Tokyo and Beijing.
"The reason things calmed down over the past 10 days or so ... was not bluster fatigue setting in, or not deciding strategically to tone things down now after having been on the rampage for so long, but more to catch their adversaries off their guard," said Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor of Korean Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the United States.
(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim in BEIJING; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

NKorea says verdict soon for American citizen

Associated Press/David Guttenfelder - North Korean soldiers tour the park surrounding Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, the mausoleum where the bodies of the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il lie embalmed, in Pyongyang on Thursday, April 25, 2013. North Korea on Thursday marked the 81st anniversary of the founding of its military, which began as an anti-Japanese militia and now has an estimated 1.2-million troops. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder) 
 

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea says it will soon deliver a verdict in the case of a detained American it accuses of trying to overthrow the government, further complicating already fraught relations between Pyongyang and Washington.

The announcement about Kenneth Bae comes in the middle of a lull after weeks of war threats and other provocative acts by North Korea against the U.S. and South Korea.

Bae, identified in North Korean state media by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, is a tour operator of Korean descent who was arrested after arriving with a tour on Nov. 3 in Rason, a special economic zone bordering China and Russia.

"The preliminary inquiry into crimes committed by American citizen Pae Jun Ho closed," the official Korean Central News Agency said. "In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK with hostility toward it. His crimes were proved by evidence. He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgment."

DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
It is not known what sort of sentence Bae faces, but under North Korea's criminal code, terrorist acts include murdering, kidnapping and injuring the country's citizens can lead to a death sentence or life in jail.
In 2009, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for trespassing and unspecified hostile acts. They were freed later that year after former President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang to negotiate their release.

Including Ling and Lee, Bae is the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The other Americans were eventually deported or released after high-profile diplomatic interventions, such as by Clinton.

North Korea has expressed rage over U.N. sanctions over a February nuclear test and ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, though analysts say Pyongyang's motive is to get its Korean War foes to negotiate on its own terms.
"For North Korea, Bae is a bargaining chip in dealing with the U.S. The North will use him in a way that helps bring the U.S. to talks when the mood slowly turns toward dialogue," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Seoul's Dongguk University.
North Korea and the United States fought the 1950-53 Korean War and don't have diplomatic relations. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang represents the United States.
KCNA didn't say when Bae's verdict will be announced.
North Korea's state media and the U.S. government have made little information about Bae public.
But his friends, colleagues and South Korean activists specializing in North Korea affairs said Bae is a Christian missionary based in a Chinese border town who frequently made trips to North Korea to feed orphans there. It is not known whether he tried to evangelize while in North Korea.
Officially, North Korea guarantees freedom of religion. In practice, authorities crack down on Christians, who are seen as Western-influenced threats to the government. The distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean banishment to a labor camp or execution, defectors from the country have said.
Meanwhile, South Korea is pulling its citizens from a joint factory park in North Korea after Pyongyang rejected Seoul's demand for talks on the inter-Korean symbol of detente. The park was shuttered earlier this month after the North pulled its workers out of it, objecting to views in South Korea that the complex is a source of badly needed hard currency for Pyongyang.

Al-Shabaab in crosshairs of Somalia's anti-terrorism law

In the coming days Somalia's parliament will debate a proposed anti-terrorism law that targets al-Shabaab and aims to restructure the country's national security and intelligence services in the fight against terrorism.

• Cars burn after al-Shabaab suicide bombers attacked the Benadir regional court complex in Mogadishu on April 14, 2013. [Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP]
  

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The Somali cabinet approved the draft anti-terrorism law on April 18th, four days after al-Shabaab operatives killed at least 29 civilians in a raid on the Benadir regional court complex.
The details of the proposed draft law have yet to be released to the public, but will be available once the debate in parliament formally begins.
"This is a very important piece of legislation that represents a key component of the government's strategy to fight terrorism comprehensively while taking responsibility of our own borders and the security of our people," Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon said in a prepared statement issued after the draft was approved.
"We will prosecute a counter-terrorism campaign according to the most robust, transparent and credible laws that have the confidence of the Somali public and fully respect international human rights," Shirdon later said in a series of messages posted on his Twitter account.
"We are in the last stages of a military campaign against an enemy that has been reduced to terrorism and guerrilla operations," he said.

Punishing terrorists

The draft anti-terrorism law is part of the federal government's strategy to combat militant groups that are trying to destabilise the country, Deputy Minister of Information, Posts and Telecommunications Ibrahim Isaaq Yaroow said.
"In Somalia, we urgently need such a law, which makes it easier to eliminate the danger of terrorists that threaten the security of the country and endanger society and the nation," he told Sabahi.
"The new law includes lots of provisions specifically designed to fight terrorism as a phenomenon and punish terrorists that terrorise and mercilessly kill innocent civilians," he said. "This new law has become absolutely necessary and a priority at this stage due to the current security situation, so we hope that parliament will ratify this law as soon as possible."
Hassan Abdirahman, a former Ministry of Justice adviser, said the proposed anti-terrorism law bolsters Somalia's national security and stability. He urged the government to use all measures at its disposal to combat terrorism.
"No country can survive while it is threatened from within and Somalia is a country with internal threats as a result of the disease of terrorism," Abdirahman told Sabahi. "The Somali people have already been burned by terrorists who threaten the security of their country."
Mohamed Hussein, a Mogadishu-based political analyst, welcomed the counter-terrorism legislation but expressed concern about whether it could affect people's freedoms and rights.
"Somalia needs an anti-terrorism law but such a law should not be used as an excuse to violate basic human rights and freedoms," Hussein told Sabahi. "I hope that the Somali parliament carefully reviews this new law."
Osman Mohamed Roble, a 47-year old cab driver in Mogadishu, said he hopes the legislation will help put an end to terrorist operations in Somalia.
"I think this is a very useful step because we need stricter laws to punish those responsible for explosions and suicide operations that kill innocent civilians," he said.
"All citizens should stand as one to face these terrorists. We have to help the brave security forces in their fight against terrorism by giving information on the whereabouts of terrorists in any part of the country," he said.