North Korean leader, Kim, is thought to be physically impaired or he’d have taken part in recent celebrations marking the nation’s 60th anniversary. The ceremony contained some elements to obscure the fact that Kim wasn’t there. Media reports last week out of South Korea suggested that Kim’s condition has improved but that he could have partial paralysis on one side. With that degree of physical impairment, there may be some mental impairment. And if he were incapacitated, it is likely serious implications for international negotiation on the country’s nuclear disarmament.

These negotiations are going nowhere and maybe going backward if the assertion of a North Korea official, Hyun Hak Bong, involved in last weekend’s energy talk’s with the South who announced preparations to re-start the North’s Yongbyong nuclear reactor is to be believed. Two recent decisions in the six-party talks that both need Kim’s approval seem to have been put on hold: North Korea’s release of a verification protocol on its nuclear disarmament, and an agreement with the Japanese on abductions. The North Koreans appear to have ordered IAEA officials to leave Yongbyong.The South moved for a temporary suapension of aid, but has just resumed tourism to the North.

Although US Ambassador Christopher Hill has clearly not thrown in the towel, the six party talks seem all but dead until after the US elections.

These developments are important to Australia, yet, after October 2002, we seem to have dealt ourselves out of the chance of superior intelligence on, and influence in, dealings with North Korea.

Last year, the DRPK withdrew its mission from Canberra. However, recently Australia’s new ambassador to the DPRK, Peter Rowe, (based in Seoul) presented his credentials to Pyongyang.

The uncertainties surrounding the leadership in Pyongyang, the current hiatus in the six-party talks, and the transition to a new administration in the United States, recommend that Australia not sit on the sidelines any longer but use all the assets it has to deal itself into a game that could evolve very rapidly and have profound effects on our strategic interests in Northeast Asia and across the region more broadly.