Nine days after North Korea's latest nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday expressed a continued willingness to try to revive dialogue with Pyongyang if it freezes its atomic weapons and ballistic weapons development programs.
A multi-national forum intended to denuclearize the Korean peninsula was set up in 2003, but the parties (both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States) have not met since December 2008, when talks stalled over verification issues.
Analysts, reviewing open source satellite imagery, say the impoverished country may have completed preparations for three more nuclear tests that could occur at any time.
South Korea's foreign minister, Yu Byung-se, appeared in no mood Sunday to consider negotiations with his country's arch-rival, in view of Pyongyang's repeated defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions.
Yun called for the current U.N. General Assembly to “send out a united and forceful message,” and impose even more robust sanctions on North Korea as it is “now at the final stage of nuclear weaponization.”
Yu warned that Pyongyang's weapons are a “looming perfect storm that may not only pounce on Northeast Asia but sweep over the entire world.”