The author, Gong Ro-Myung, 74, is a former foreign minister of South Korea, the Korean chairman of the Japan-South Korea Forum, and president of the Asahi Shimbun Asia Network. He also served as South Korea's ambassador to the USSR, Russia and Japan.

For the first time in three years and three months, Japan and North Korea held consultations in Beijing in early February to discuss, among other things, the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which drew much attention from varied quarters. The comprehensive talks, which lasted for five days, also dealt with nuclear and missile issues that North Korea has been refusing to discuss with Japan. But the meeting ended without reaching any agreement.

One particular newspaper article on the meeting that caught my eye said that North Korea, in response to the Japanese demand to extradite suspects involved in the abduction of Japanese citizens, called for Japan to hand over its citizens who are involved in NGO activities to assist defectors from the North. In many cases, talks with North Korea end this way. In this case, too, the rumbling of a great mountain has ended in the squeak of a mouse, as a saying goes.

Three weeks after the Japan-North Korea consultations, military talks were held between South Korea and North Korea in Panmunjom, and the results were more or less the same. The South side made a proposal to discuss the establishment of a safe fishing area in the West Sea (Yellow Sea) to prevent naval clashes in disputed waters. But, North Korea called for a new demarcation, sticking to its stand that the maritime border off the west coast drawn at the time of the 1953 armistice should be redefined. As a result, no progress was achieved in the talks, which ended with delegates from both sides loudly exchanging acrimonious words.

In the Inter-Korean Red Cross talks, which began in 1971, North Korea has consistently made the sale of "dialogues" its strategy. Selling "dialogues" as a "commodity" is not directed to the South alone. The same is true in its talks with both Japan and the United States.

A Japanese delegate at the latest Japan-North Korea talks, enraged at the absence of sincerity on the part of North Korea, reportedly suggested possible economic sanctions against that country. But, it is doubtful if such sanctions would result in any effective measures. This is because the weight of the Chinese economy in North Korea has been sharply increasing in recent years.

The ratio of North Korea's international trade accounted for by Japan has declined from 23 percent in 2000 to 7 percent, or $250 million, in 2004. Compared to this, North Korea's trade with China in 2004 amounted to $1.39 billion, or 39 percent of its total trade value. This clearly shows North Korea's conspicuous inclination toward China.

Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Pyongyang in October 2005, and North Korean General Secretary Kim Jong-il made a tour of China in January 2006. And, in this connection, it is being rumored that an economic cooperation project amounting to $2 billion or $5 billion is progressing between the two countries.

It has been agreed among the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia that the North Korean nuclear issue should be solved, whether one likes it or not, within the framework of the 6-party talks. U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the U.S. government for outsourcing its North Korean policy in the 6-party talks to China, and expressed strong doubts if that was the only way to solving the problem. However, there will be no other way to replace the 6-party talks, as the United States does not seem to have the will to deploy fleets of aircraft carriers in the seas off the east and west coasts of the Korean Peninsula and press the North to solve the nuclear problem.

A former high U.S. government official, an old friend of mine, I met recently emphatically said that whoever becomes the president of the United States, it will be impossible for the U.S. to reach any agreement with North Korea before its nuclear weapons are totally abandoned. At the same time, he referred to the dreadful possibility that, if any nuclear materials are transferred to terrorists from North Korea and it becomes clear that the terrorists have used these as a weapon against the U.S., the United States will not be able to avoid retaliation without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. I suppose North Korea, of course, is fully aware of this possibility.

In North Korea now, it is reported that the idolization of Kim Jong-chol, a son of Kim Jong-il, as successor to the general secretary is silently in progress. In the world of the 21st century, it is most likely that we will see the enthronement of a third generation of the Kim Il-sung family.