Analysis: China a key player in getting North Korea back into negotiations

TWO days after Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, died, South Korean authorities still knew nothing about it. American officials also seemed at a loss, with the State Department at first merely acknowledging that press reports had mentioned his death.

The South Korean and US intelligence services’ inability to pick up any sign of what had happened attests to the North Korean regime’s opaque character, but also to their own deficiencies. American planes and satellites watch North Korea day and night, yet we know very little about that country, because all vital information is restricted to a small group of leaders obsessed with secrecy.

The leadership change is occurring at the worst possible time. It is known that Chinese leaders had hoped that Kim Jong-il would survive long enough to consolidate support among the country’s various factions for the succession of his son, Kim Jong-un.

All the symbolic attributes of power have been transferred to Kim Jong-un, but such trappings will not make the transition process any easier for a young man of less than 30 in a society where veteran military chiefs retain so much power.

The economic situation – still precarious, with many people close to starvation – constitutes another key challenge. Two examples illustrate the impact: the price of rice has tripled while consumption of electricity is down by two-thirds from two decades ago.

My memories of North Korea are of a poor, depressed country. Pyongyang was deserted and dark, illuminated only by the lights of the cavalcade taking us from the official housing to the opera house.

My trip took place in April 2002, a somewhat optimistic time. The European Union had joined an agreement initiated by the two Koreas and the US to persuade North Korea to freeze and later dismantle its nuclear programme. In exchange, two light-water nuclear reactors would be built to generate electricity, and 500,000 tonnes of oil would be supplied annually until the first reactor began operating. In turn, the EU initiated an extensive humanitarian aid project.

The talks with Kim Jong-il and his collaborators seemed promising but the agreement did not last long. In 2003, North Korea abandoned the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. From that moment, all optimism was lost, until contacts were reinitiated in a complex six-party format (China, Russia, the US, Japan, and the two Koreas) that continued, with ups and downs, until the end of 2007.

Since the maritime incidents of 2009 and 2010, in which North Korean forces attacked South Korean assets, there has been virtually no contact at all between the two sides.

The sudden change of leadership in North Korea increases the threat of unexpected incidents. In order to limit the risk, it is essential to keep relations with China as transparent as possible. It is China that has the most direct contact with North Koreas, and that could best catalyse resumption of talks.

• Javier Solana, a senior fellow in foreign policy at Washington DC think-tank the Brookings Institution, was secretary-general of Nato from 1995-99.