An American Christian missionary imprisoned in North Korea is in deteriorating health and has been moved from a prison work camp to a hospital within the past two weeks, his sister said at a vigil for her brother on Saturday.

Kenneth Bae was sentenced in May to 15 years of hard labour after North Korea’s Supreme Court convicted him of state subversion. The court said Bae, 45, had used his tourism business to form groups to overthrow the government.

Bae was detained in November as he led a tour group through the northern region of the country. His sentencing came amid acrimonious relations between Pyongyang and Washington over the reclusive state’s nuclear program.

Bae’s sister Terri Chung said that her brother had until recently been held at a prison for foreigners and put to work ploughing and planting fields.

However, he is suffering from a range of health problems including an enlarged heart and chronic diabetes as well as back and leg pain, necessitating his transfer to a state hospital, she said.

Chung said she learned of her brother’s transfer from the Swedish ambassador to North Korea, who visited Bae on Friday. The ambassador, who has met with Bae a handful of times since his detention, has been his only foreign visitor, Chung said.

Chung’s comments came at a prayer vigil for Bae at a Seattle Church on Saturday evening attended by more than 100 friends, family and supporters. Chung also read from a letter sent by Bae to his supporters written on June 13, in which he encouraged them to push his case with American officials.

“The only way I can be free to return home is by obtaining amnesty,” Bae wrote. “In order for that to happen it will take more active efforts from the US government side.”

Two American journalists arrested in 2009 by North Korea and held until former president Bill Clinton travelled there to negotiate their release were organising a satellite vigil in New York, one of the journalists, Euna Lee said.

North Korea has in the past used the release of high-profile American prisoners as a means of garnering a form of prestige or acceptance by portraying visiting dignitaries as paying homage to the country and its leader.

That pattern has complicated the response of US lawmakers and the State Department, which has called for Bae’s immediate release on “humanitarian grounds”, but resisted sending high-profile envoys to negotiate, as it has done in the past.

An internet petition started by Bae’s son urging US President Barack Obama to secure a “Special Amnesty” for Bae has garnered nearly 8,000 signatures.

There have been other calls for his release, such as a Twitter message from former basketball player Dennis Rodman, who visited North Korea in February, but Chung said US officials have assured her they are pursuing quieter clemency efforts.

Reports last month that former US President Jimmy Carter was set to visit North Korea to negotiate for Bae were ultimately denied as false.

Bae, a naturalised US citizen born in South Korea who moved to the United States with his family in 1985, has spent much of the last seven years in China, where he started a business leading tour groups into the northern region of North Korea, Chung said.

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea on Sunday offered high-level talks with the United States to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, only days after it canceled planned official talks with South Korea for the first time in over two years.
Planned high-level talks between North and South Korea were scrapped last week after the North abruptly called off the talks. The North blamed the South for scuttling discussions that sought to mend estranged ties between the rival Koreas.
North Korea National Defence Commission in a statement carried by KCNA news agency on Sunday said Washington can pick a date and place for talks and the two sides can discuss a range of issues, but no preconditions should be attached.
“In order to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to achieve regional peace and safety, we propose to hold high-level talks between the DPRK and the United States, ” said the spokesman for the North’s National Defence Commission in the statement. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
“If the U.S. is truly interested in securing regional peace and safety and easing tensions, it should not mention of preconditions for the talks,” the statement said.
The United States has consistently demanded denuclearization in North Korea as a precondition to any talks.
Washington has been increasingly skeptical of any move by Pyongyang for dialogue as it has repeatedly backtracked on deals, the latest in 2012 when it agreed to a missile and nuclear test moratorium, only to fire a rocket weeks later.
Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear and missile strikes against South Korea and the United States after it was hit with U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear weapons test.
“North Korea’s proposal for dialogue to the U.S. is all part of the game to get economic aid as U.N. sanctions were tougher than before,” said Kim Seung-hwan, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The recent summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping might have played a role in the North’s changed attitude, in which the two leaders were on the same page regarding the North’s nuclear development, Kim said.
North Korea’s one major ally, China, has urged Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program and return to talks.
In the statement, Pyongyang reiterated it was willing to discuss disarmament but the world should also be denuclearized including its southern neighbor.
North Korea agreed a denuclearization-for-aid deal in 2005 but later backed out of that accord. It has said its nuclear arms are a “treasured sword” that it will not abandon.
Pyongyang also said it wants the United States to sign a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War that divided the two Koreas.
Korea was divided after the Second World War and when the Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a permanent peace treaty, it left the two countries technically at war.
The North has a long record of making threats to secure concessions from the United States and South Korea.
North Korea’s 30-year-old leader, Kim Jong-un, took power in December 2011 and has since carried out two long-range rocket launches and a nuclear weapons test, as well as a campaign of threats against South Korea and the United States.
Threats have waned in the past month, showing signs of easing tensions such as proposing talks with South Korea in early June. The talks had been intended to discuss issues resuming operations of joint commercial projects and families split during the 1950-53 Korean War.
In the coming days, North and South Korea will mark the 60th anniversary of the Korean War and also the armistice.
(Reporting By Jane Chung, Editing by Michael Perry)

SEOUL, South Korea: Human rights groups on Thursday demanded that North Korea account for nine of its citizens reportedly repatriated after fleeing to Laos.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the seven men and two women were flown home Tuesday via China despite a request from South Korea that Beijing not repatriate them. The report cited an anonymous Foreign Ministry official in Seoul expressing strong regret over the Chinese decision. South Korea’s Foreign Ministrydeclined to confirm the report.

Close to 25,000 North Koreans have left their authoritarian country since the end of the Korean War, the vast majority via China and then onward via Southeast Asian countries including Laos, Thailand and Vietnam before flying to Seoul.

China, North Korea’s foremost ally, does not recognize the defectors as asylum seekers and has been known to return them to Pyongyang.

Activists say defectors caught leaving North Korea without state permission could face prison and even torture.

Under North Korean law, defectors face a minimum of five years of hard labor and as much as life in prison or the death penalty in cases deemed particularly serious.

“North Korea has to come clean on where these nine refugees are and publicly guarantee that they will not be harmed or retaliated against for having fled the country,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “As a result of their return, they are at dire risk.”

The Yonhap report said the defectors, aged between 15 and 23, entered Laos through China on May 9 and were caught by Laotian authorities May 16.

According to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, a delegation from the Laotian capital of Vientiane visited North Korea on May 20. Laos sent the defectors to China on Monday before they were sent to North Korea a day later, Yonhap reported.

Several attempts to contact officials in Laos, a secretive and strict socialist regime in Southeast Asia, were unsuccessful.

“It’s tragic and disappointing,” Kim Eun-young, an activist with the Seoul-based Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, said Thursday of the reported repatriation. “We fear defectors will now feel more intimidated about trying to come to South Korea through Laos or other Southeast Asian countries.”

In Seoul, protesters pleaded with the South Korean government to step up efforts to stop the repatriation of the North Koreans. Nine “young lives are in your hands,” read one sign addressed to Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

The number of North Koreans who settle in South Korea had been rising over several years before peaking in 2009 with nearly 3,000 arrivals. The South Korean constitution guarantees North Koreans citizenship after the government can establish that they are not spies.

Flows have slowed significantly since then. Last year, just over 1,500 arrived in South Korea, according to the government in Seoul.

There are unconfirmed reports that North Korea has boosted security at the Chinese border in recent years to slow the flow of defectors. Over the past year, North Korea has publicized the return of some defectors to North Korea.

The U.S. government, which supports efforts to promote reform in North Korea and is a strong ally of South Korea, said in a statement that it was concerned about the reports of the repatriation and urged “all countries in the region to cooperate in the protection of North Korean refugees within their territories.”

The Korean Peninsula has been divided by a 4-kilometer-wide (2.5-mile-wide) Demilitarized Zone since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea sent one of its top military officials as a “special envoy” from its leader Kim Jong-un to Beijing on Wednesday, accompanied by a high-powered delegation in what appeared to be a bid to mend frayed relations with its most important ally.

The delegation led by Choe Ryong-hae, vice chairman of the country’s top military body, was the most senior to visit China since Kim’s kingmaker uncle Jang Song-thaek made the trip in August 2012.

Ties between Pyongyang and Beijing have been hurt by the North’s third nuclear test, carried out in February, and by China agreeing to U.N. sanctions on the North and starting to put a squeeze on North Korean banks.

North Korean state news agency KCNA said China’s ambassador to Pyongyang, who is seen as the closest of all foreign envoys to Kim Jong-un, saw the delegation off at the airport.

Choe’s first meeting in Beijing was with Wang Jiarui, head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s International Department, China’s Xinhua news agency said, without providing details.

The diplomatic move by North Korea came after Japan reached out to Pyongyang last week by sending a special envoy to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to hold talks over Japanese citizens abducted by the isolated and impoverished state.

Choe is one of the tight coterie of officials around Kim Jong-un, who has been in power for just over a year after succeeding his father.

He is a long-time political administrator and was surprisingly made a vice marshal in the army last year despite having no military background.

Jang’s trip in 2012 had been aimed at securing a visit for Kim to Beijing and to win investment for the North’s shattered economy, although it appeared to have failed, according to diplomats. Jang is seen as the most powerful official in North Korea after Kim.

“It is an important visit as he (Choe) is both a high-ranked official and coming as a special envoy of Kim Jong-un, and there have been no high level contacts between the two countries for such a long time,” said Jin Canrong, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.

BEIJING LIKELY TO SEEK RETURN TO NUCLEAR TALKS

Jin, a specialist on China-North Korea relations, said Beijing would once again urge Pyongyang to return to the so-called “Six Party Talks” process, aimed at denuclearization.

The talks included the North, China, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia and have been stalled since 2009 when North Korea conducted its second nuclear test.

“The Chinese people have been angered by North Korea’s provocations. Certainly one of China’s demands will be for North Korea to stop doing this,” said Jin.

As well as staging the country’s third nuclear test, Kim Jong-un presided over the launch of two long range rockets. These are banned by the United Nations due to concerns Pyongyang is testing technology to use in a long-range nuclear missile.

North Korea is almost entirely reliant on China for imports of fuel and food and since it closed an industrial zone on the border with South Korea, has few other outlets for its exports.

The North has traditionally attempted to play China off against the United States and appeared to be open to the possibility of a deal with Japan that irked both Seoul and Washington when Abe’s aide visited Pyongyang last week.

Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s cabinet secretary, told a news conference on Wednesday that Japan aimed to resume talks with North Korea as part of attempts to resolve the abduction issue.

“Since we are probing all the possibilities, that is naturally included,” Suga said.

Japan and North Korea last held government talks in November 2012, before the North’s last long-range missile launch in December and nuclear test in February.

BEIJING: China’s top general said a fourth North Korean nuclear weapons test is a possibility that underscores the need for fresh talks between Pyongyang and other regional parties.
Chief of the General Staff Gen. Fang Fenghui said Beijing firmly opposes the North’s nuclear weapons program and wants to work with others on negotiations to end it. He said Beijing’s preference is for a return to long-stalled disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the U.S.
“We ask all sides to work actively to work on the North Koreans to stop nuclear tests and stop producing nuclear weapons,” Fang told reporters. “We believe that dialogue should be the right solution.”
Fang offered no indication as to when Beijing thought a test might happen or give other details.
His comments Monday followed a meeting with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose first visit to China in that position comes amid heightened tensions between Pyongyang, South Korea and the U.S.
North Korea has been threatening to attack the U.S. and South Korea over recent military drills and sanctions imposed as punishment for its third nuclear test in February. Pyongyang calls the annual drills a rehearsal for invasion. South Korean officials have said the North is poised to test-fire a medium-range missile capable of reaching the American territory of Guam.
China is North Korea’s most important diplomatic ally, main trading partner, and a key source of food and fuel aid. Yet while Beijing signed on to tougher U.N. sanctions following the February test, it says it has limited influence with Pyongyang and Fang declined to say whether Beijing would adopt tougher measures to pressure the North into reducing tensions.
In other remarks, Fang also sought to reassure Dempsey over recent reports of Chinese military-sponsored hacking attacks on U.S. targets, saying China opposed all such activity. The new spotlight on a long-festering problem has prompted calls for Washington to get tough on Beijing, and the administration is reportedly considering measures ranging from trade sanctions to diplomatic pressure and electronic countermeasures.
Fang repeated China’s portrayal of itself as a major victim of hacking, saying China is heavily reliant on the Internet and has a strong vested interest in ensuring cybersecurity, Fang said.
“If control is lost over security in cyberspace, the effects can be, and I don’t exaggerate, at times no less than a nuclear bomb,” Fang said.
For his part, Dempsey sought to allay Chinese unease about the U.S. military’s renewed focus on Asia. That has reawakened Chinese fears of being encircled by U.S. bases and alliances and brought strong criticism from the military.
“One of the things I talked about today with the general, is we seek to be a stabilizing influence in the region. And in fact, we believe, that it would be our absence that would be destabilizing, not our presence,” Dempsey said.
However, while Washington is committed to building a “better, deeper, more enduring” relationship with China, its traditional alliances in Asia — including with Japan and other Chinese rivals — could at times create friction, he said.
While distrust lingers on both sides, efforts to expand cooperation between the Chinese and U.S. militaries have gained friction in recent months, and new anti-piracy and humanitarian relief drills are planned.

LONDON: A leading British university criticised the BBC on Sunday for arranging an academic trip to North Korea to make an undercover documentary, saying it had put students who were unaware of the plans in danger.

The London School of Economics (LSE) said three BBC journalists – including the respected reporterJohn Sweeney – joined a student society trip at the end of March, posing as tourists to make a film about the secretive state.

The university said the students had been told “a journalist” would accompany them, but it had not been made clear the BBC’s aim was to use the visit to record an undercover film for “Panorama”, a current affairs programme.

“This was not an official LSE trip,” Craig Calhoun, the Director of the LSE, wrote on Twitter. “Non-students & BBC organised it, used the society to recruit some students, & passed it off.”

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have escalated in recent weeks, with North Korea threatening nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.

Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of the LSE’s student union, told Sky News the students were only told of the BBC’s intentions to make an undercover film at a very late stage, with one saying she was only informed when they were on the plane to North Korea.

She said the BBC had used the students as “human shields”.

The university said Sweeney, who graduated from the LSE in 1980, had posed as a history PhD student at the university to gain entry to the country even though he currently had no connections with the institution.

“BBC staff have admitted that the group was deliberately misled to the involvement of the BBC in the visit,” the LSE said in an email to staff and students released to the media.

“It is the LSE’s view that the students were not given enough information to enable informed consent, yet were given enough to put them in serious danger if the subterfuge had been uncovered prior to their departure from North Korea.”

“STUDENTS WARNED”

It said the LSE’s chairman had asked the BBC to pull the documentary, which is due to be shown on Monday, but the broadcaster’s director-general had refused.

Sweeney admitted he had lied to the North Korean government agency that helped organise the visit, but defended the BBC’s actions.

“What the LSE has been doing is putting out stuff which is factually inaccurate in our view,” Sweeney told BBC TV. “They’re putting words into the students’ mouths. The majority of students support this programme.”

Ceri Thomas, the Head of BBC News Programmes, said the students had been told twice about the possible dangers of having a journalist on the trip, but were not informed about the broadcaster’s plans to make an undercover film because it would have put them in a worse position had the BBC team been found out.

“They had the information we think to make informed consent,” he told BBC TV. He said he could not categorically rule out students’ lives were put at risk but stated there was an “overwhelming” public interest in making the documentary.

PYONGYANG, North Korea: Despite North Korea’s warnings that the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula is so high it cannot guarantee the safety of foreign residents, it literally trotted out athletes from around the world on Sunday for a marathon through the streets of its capital — suggesting its concerns of an imminent military crisis might not be as dire as its official pronouncements proclaim.

As it prepares to celebrate its most important holiday of the year, the birthday of national founder Kim Il Sung on Monday, the mixed message — threats of a “thermonuclear war” while showcasing foreign athletes and even encouraging tourism — was particularly striking on Sunday.

Pyongyang crowds lined the streets to watch athletes from 16 nations compete in the 26th Mangyongdae Prize Marathon in the morning and then filled a performance hall for a gala concert featuring ethnic Korean performers brought in from China, Russia and Japan as part of a slew of a events culminating in Kim’s birthday — called the “Day of the Sun.”

After racing through the capital, the foreign athletes and hundreds of North Korean runners were cheered into Kim Il Sung Stadium by tens of thousands of North Korean spectators. North Korea’s official media said the marathon was larger than previous years and that enthusiasm was “high among local marathoners and their coaches as never before.”

“The feeling is like, I came last year already, the situation is the same,” said Taiwan’s Chang Chia-che, who finished 15th.

Showing off foreign athletes and performers as part of the birthday celebrations has a propaganda value that is part of Pyongyang’s motivation for highlighting the events to its public, even as it rattles its sabers to the outside world. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has said it could not vouch for the safety of foreigners, indicated embassies consider evacuation plans and urged foreigners residing in South Korea to get out as well.

But there does not appear to be much of a sense of crisis among the general population, either.

Pyongyang residents are mobilizing en masse for the events marking the birthday, rushing to tidy up streets, put new layers of paint on buildings and erect posters and banners hailing Kim, the grandfather of the country’s new dynastic leader, Kim Jong Un.

Pyongyang’s statements are commonly marked by alarming hyperbole and it has not ordered the small number of foreigners who are here to leave. Several embassies in Pyongyang refused to comment on the suggestion they consider evacuating, referring questions back to their home countries. But there were no reports that any diplomatic missions had actually left.

Even so, its warning has heightened concerns in a region struggling to assess how seriously to take North Korea’s recent torrent of angry rhetoric over ongoing U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers just across the border. Officials in South Korea, the United States and Japan say intelligence indicates that, fresh off a successful nuclear test in February, North Korea’s leaders are ready to launch a new medium-range missile.

North Korea has also taken the unusual move of suspending work at the Kaesong factory complex on its side of the Demilitarized Zone, a major source of foreign currency and one of the last remaining symbols of inter-Korean rapprochement.

On Sunday, it rejected South Korea’s proposal to resolve tensions through dialogue. It said it has no intension of talking with Seoul unless it abandons what it called the rival South’s confrontational posture.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in the region to coordinate the response with U.S. allies and China, warned North Korea not to conduct a missile test, saying it will be an act of provocation that “will raise people’s temperatures” and further isolate the country and its people.

Kerry was in Tokyo on Sunday after meeting with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Saturday. In Tokyo, Kerry and Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, opened the door to direct talks with North Korea if certain conditions are met. Kerry said the U.S. was “prepared to reach out” to North Korea, but that Pyongyang must first lower tensions and honor previous agreements.

North Korea has issued no specific warnings to ships and aircraft that a missile test is imminent, and is also continuing efforts to increase tourism.

“We haven’t experienced any change,” said Andrea Lee, president and CEO of Uri Tours, which specializes in bringing tourists to North Korea. “They have been encouraging us to bring in more people.”

Lee said about 2,000-3,000 Western tourists visit North Korea each year and that the level is rising, though the recent tensions have sparked a significant number of cancellations. Air Koryo, North Korea’s flag-carrier, announced it is planning to add more regular passenger flights to and from Beijing, another sign that Pyongyang — while certainly not ready to throw open its doors — wants to make it easier for tourists to put North Korea on their travel itineraries.

“I never considered canceling,” said Sandra Cook, a retired economics professor from Piedmont, California, who planned her trip in November, before the tensions escalated. “I think it is a particularly interesting time to be here.”

With Lee as her guide, Cook and several other Americans and Canadians toured the North Korean side of the DMZ, Kaesong and a collective farm. She said that aside from the North Korean DMZ guides’ harsh portrayal of the “American imperialists'” role in the Korean War and on the peninsula today, she was surprised by the seeming calm and normalcy of what she has been allowed to see.

“The whole world is watching North Korea, and there we were yesterday peacefully strolling along the river in the sunshine. It’s surreal,” she said. “If you didn’t know about the tensions, you would never know it. You would think everything is fine. The place feels so ordinary.”

BEIJING: The United States said on Saturday that Chinahad agreed to help rid North Korea of its nuclear capability by peaceful means, but Beijing made no specific commitment in public to pressure its long-time ally to change its ways.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met China’s top leaders in a bid to persuade them to push reclusive North Korea, whose main diplomatic supporter is Beijing, to scale back its belligerence and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Visiting Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry has made no secret of his desire to see China take a more active stance towards North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.

Kerry and China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said both countries supported the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

“We are able, the United States and China, to underscore our joint commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner,” Kerry told reporters, sitting next to Yang at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.

But North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it described on Friday as its “treasured” guarantor of security.

Yang said China’s stance on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula was clear and consistent, repeating phrasing used by the Foreign Ministry since the crisis began.

“We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. To properly address the Korea nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties. It is also the shared responsibility of all parties,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

“China will work with other relevant parties, including the United States, to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks and balanced implementation of the goals set out in the September 19 joint statement of 2005.”

The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment program that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based program.

Six-party aid-for-disarmament talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, collapsed in 2008 when the North walked away from the deal.

Kerry declined to comment on what specifically China may do to push for a peaceful solution on North Korea, saying only that they had discussed all possibilities.

At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signaled the U.S. preference for diplomacy, but stressed North Korea must take “meaningful” steps on denuclearization.

“We don’t want to get into a threat for threat or … some kind of confrontational language here. There’s been enough of that,” Kerry said in Beijing.

If North Korea got rid of its nuclear capabilities, then the United States would have no reason to maintain recently deployed defensive capabilities – such as a missile defense system sent to Guam – he said.

“Now, obviously, if the threat disappears, i.e. North Korea denuclearizes, the same imperative does not exist at that point in time for us to have to have that kind of robust, forward leaning posture of defense.”

The Pentagon has in recent weeks responded to the North Korean threats by announcing plans to position two Aegis guided-missile destroyers in the western Pacific and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to Guam.

SEOUL, South Korea: To the outside world, the talk often appears to border on the lunatic, with the poor, hungry and electricity-starved nation threatening to lay waste to America’s cities in an atomic firestorm, or to overrun South Korea in a lightning attack.

Enemy capitals, North Korea said, will be turned “into a sea of fire.” North Korea’s first strikes will be “a signal flare marking the start of a holy war.” Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal is “mounted on launch pads, aimed at the windpipe of our enemies.”

And it’s not all talk. The profoundly isolated, totalitarian nation has launched two rockets over the past year. A February nuclear test resulted in still more U.N. sanctions. Another missile test may be in the planning stages.

But there is also a logic behind North Korea’s behavior, a logic steeped in internal politics, one family’s fear of losing control and the ways that a weak, poverty-wracked nation can extract concessions from some of the world’s most fearsome military powers.

It’s also steeped in another important fact: It works.

At various points over the past two decades, North Korea’s cycles of threats and belligerence have pressured the international community into providing billions of dollars in aid and, for a time, helped push South Korea’s government into improving ties.

Most importantly to Pyongyang, it has helped the Kim family remain in power decades after the fall of its patron, the Soviet Union, and long after North Korea had become an international pariah. Now the third generation of Kims, the baby-faced Kim Jong Un, is warning the world that it may soon face the wrath of Pyongyang. If the virulence of Kim Jong Un’s threats have come as a surprise, he appears largely to be following in his father’s diplomatic footsteps.

“You keep playing the game as long as it works,” said Christopher Voss, a longtime FBI hostage negotiator and now the CEO of the Black Swan Group, a strategic advisory firm focusing on negotiation. “From their perspective, why should they evolve out of this? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Like hostage-takers, the North Koreans find themselves backed into a corner of their own creation, surrounded by heavily armed foes and driven by beliefs that seem completely illogical to everyone else. “From the outside, it makes no sense,” said Voss. “From the inside it makes all the sense in the world.”

But the North Koreans also have repeatedly and purposefully backed themselves into those corners, terrifying the world with missile launches and nuclear tests that often end with North Korea getting more international assistance.

Take the early 1990s, when Pyongyang backed away from a nuclear weapons program in exchange for promises of $5 billion in fuel and two nuclear reactors. Or the late 1990s, when North Korea launched a suspected missile over Japan and dispatched a submarine into South Korean waters. But by 2000 the leaders of both Koreas were sitting down for a historic summit in Pyongyang. Then, in 2006, North Korea terrified the world with a nuclear weapons test, but a year later ratcheted back its nuclear program in exchange for aid and political concessions.

The predictability of the pattern is an important sign to scholars that at least part of what is going on has been carefully considered, and that Pyongyang has clear goals in mind.

In other words: No matter how irrational the situation looks, North Korea’s leadership is not crazy.

Instead, many observers believe, North Korea simply wants the world to believe it is crazy, leveraging the international community’s fear of unpredictability to magnify its power.

The result is obvious.

“How many countries have been overrun since the end of the Cold War? How many dictators have been deposed?” asked Rodger Baker, an analyst for Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm. “And where is North Korea? It’s still there.”

The North Korean leadership also retains, as far as is known, the support of its people. Their lives are often miserable, hunger is widespread and indoor toilets are a luxury to many. But other than a few whispered rumors of minor military rebellions, there has been no sign of revolt.

SEOUL: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea on Friday it would be a “huge mistake” to launch a medium-range missile and said the United States would never accept the reclusive country as a nuclear power.

Addressing reporters after talks with South Korea’s president and leaders of the 28,000-strong U.S. military contingent in the country, Kerry also said it was up to China, North Korea’s sole major ally, to “put some teeth” in efforts to press Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Kerry, like other U.S. officials, played down an assessment from the Pentagon’s intelligence agency that the North already had a nuclear missile capacity.

The United States, he said, wanted to resume talks about North Korea’s earlier pledges to halt its nuclear programme, but would defend its allies in the region if necessary.

North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it said on Friday were its “treasured” guarantor of security.
Kerry’s visit coincided with preparations for Monday’s anniversary of North Korean state founder Kim Il-Sung’s birth date, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new missile launch.