South Korea, Out of Options, Revives Nuke Diplomacy With North

South Korea says it's ready to give denuclearization talks with North Korea another try despite last month's artillery attack -- the biggest spike in tension between the two countries since the Korean War -- and a long history of duplicity from Pyongyang.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the Obama administration initially rejected Chinese and Russian calls for renewed six-party talks with North Korea following the Nov. 23 shelling that killed four South Koreans, saying such talks would reward the North's aggression.

In reversing that position today, Lee was blunt about the reason: There aren't any other viable options.

South Korea has "no choice but to resolve the problem of dismantling North Korea's nuclear program diplomatically through the six-party talks," Lee said at a news conference, after receiving reports from the Foreign Ministry and Unification Ministry on policy prospects moving forward in 2011.

There was no immediate reaction from the Obama administration during this holiday season week, but Washington nearly always works closely with Seoul on any policy related to North Korea. At a briefing Monday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the administration remains in close consultation with South Korea and other six-party participants, especially China.

China, which reacted slowly to the exchange of shelling last month, appears to have ratcheted up its diplomacy and is believed to have been instrumental in pushing North Korea -- which depends on Chinese food and other aid -- to show restraint during South Korean military exercises last week.

Comments today from South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek hint that China may have had some influence in the South's change of heart on new talks as well.

South Korea "will make various efforts to press North Korea to move toward denuclearization and peace in lieu of nuclear arms, open up rather than be isolated, and prioritize the living of its people over" putting its military first, Hyun said, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

"I am not saying North Korea should open up by all means possible. I believe it would be right if North Korea could develop by opening up through at least a Chinese-style model," he added.

North Korea, which desperately needs food and fuel donations from South Korea and the international community, has also become a bit more conciliatory. Last week North Korean officials told New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson during a private trip to Pyongyang that the North would be willing to sell much of its plutonium to the South.

The six-party talks -- which involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan -- have periodically produced nominally breakthrough agreements on the North's nuclear program since the negotiations began in 2003. But the process has repeatedly been suspended when Pyongyang failed to follow through on its commitments, or conducted nuclear bomb or missile tests that ramped up tension on the Korean peninsula.

As part of the most recent round of talks in late 2008, the Bush administration agreed to rescind the U.S. designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism -- part of a deal that saw impoverished North Korea disable parts of its nuclear program in exchange for massive shipments of fuel and other aid.

But six months later, North Korea fired missiles into the Sea of Japan. And after the U.N. Security Council condemned the missile launches, Pyongyang set off an atomic explosive device and expelled international and U.S. inspectors it had only recently let back into its primary nuclear site.

The nuclear issue gained urgency last month when North Korea showed visiting American scholars a brand-new uranium-processing plant that has the potential to augment a nuclear arsenal already thought to hold up to a dozen bombs.

Lee said another source of urgency is the North's vow to make 2012 -- the 100-year anniversary of the birth of founder Kim Il Sung -- the year when North Korea becomes a "great, powerful and prosperous" nation.