As I argued in an earlier article, subsequent events suggest that, in late 2008 or early 2009, Pyongyang decided that it really did not want to get what it had asked for and thus have to agree to the broad package that had taken shape in the Six-Party forum. Once this determination had been made, it became a question of making it appear that the DPRK had been driven to abandon the negotiations. Pyongyang began early by characterising the Obama administration as sustaining a ‘hostile attitude’ toward the DPRK, a nebulous and infinitely flexible allegation. It also set up a sharper challenge by announcing plans to launch a satellite and stating plainly that any adverse reaction to this activity would provoke a very strong reaction.

The UN Security Council did criticise the satellite launch, allowing Pyongyang to declare the Six-Party talks dead. The matter was then put beyond doubt with Pyongyang conducting a second nuclear test which, in turn, led to tougher sanctions under a second resolution.

Along the way, South Korea announced its intention to join the Proliferation Security Initiative which Pyongyang elected to characterise as a breach of the ban on embargoes in the 1953 armistice agreement and to declare that armistice void. Technically, of course, the DPRK has been at war with the UN coalition since they agreed to stop fighting in 1953, and Pyongyang seems to be saying that it regards the state of war as fully restored.

The border between North and South Korea has earned the reputation of being the most highly militarised and intensely belligerent frontier in the world. Determining who provoked whom at any given point in time has become an exercise in futility.

On the 1950-53 war itself, on the other hand, archives accessed since the end of the Cold War have challenged some conventional wisdom. The foundation stone of the DPRK’s national narrative – the story that underpins the sustained mobilisation of the state under a uniquely authoritarian dictatorship – is that the US attempted to invade it in 1950 and, despite being repulsed, has never stopped looking for an opportunity to do so again. In fact, there is now a paper trail confirming that Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung agreed collectively to extend communism to the South by force, and that Kim engineered an incident to provide a modicum of political cover to characterise the invasion as a defensive retaliation.

In view of stout DPRK resistance to the economic development that has swirled all around it for decades, to the USSR/Russia and China making clear in 1991/92 that it was slipping into the status of being a liability and a risk, and to a sustained effort in a dedicated forum to address its concerns, it seems to be time to consider a wider change of the rules of the game. The decision, first by the USSR in 1991 and then by China in 1992, to recognise South Korea and support both Koreas being represented in the UN (effectively abandoning the Cold War position that Pyongyang was the only legitimate Korean government) may have been intended to jolt the North into contemplating change, at least in the economic sphere.

What seems to have happened is that Pyongyang saw this only as abandonment, a stripping away of its security blanket, leading it to focus sharply on the bomb as a shield that would deflect all pressures for change. There is no evidence, to my knowledge, that China or Russia have since tried in any way to suggest that Pyongyang should have some confidence in the deterrent effect of their historical security ties. The possibility cannot be excluded that, if they have done so, Pyongyang responded that it regarded their security assurances as worthless, a serious loss of face that neither power would wish anyone to know about.

Pyongyang believes that it has now positioned itself for an entirely different set of negotiations. The prize on offer is no longer the elimination of its nuclear capability but the size and reach of its nuclear forces, the alert status of these forces, the scale and diversity of its missile development program, and the intensity of its effort to secure foreign markets for these capabilities. Pyongyang has been signalling discreetly for some time that this was the direction in which it was headed. A key manifestation of US ‘hostility’ had been the tactical nuclear weapons the US deployed in South Korea until 1991.

When it became clear that the North’s demand to independently verify their withdrawal would be accommodated, Pyongyang’s demands extended first to the US conventional forces deployed in the South, and then to the alliance itself between Seoul and Washington. The DPRK’s academics have already been authorised to characterise the logical end point of this line of reasoning: the DPRK cannot be expected to entertain the dismantlement of its nuclear capability while anyone, but especially the US, retains its own. In other words, Pyongyang will eliminate its last nuclear weapon on the same day that the US (and, presumably, all other nuclear weapon states) does so.

Washington is sticking to its position that the parameters of a deal have been agreed, that all the elements are on the table, and that the Six-Party format remains the most appropriate as it involves players that have key roles in delivering the outcomes. Pyongyang is now on a different page in respect to both the purpose and the format of any future negotiations.

South Korea’s President, Lee Myung-bak, recently proposed talks on the formidable conventional forces arrayed around the demilitarised zone, and reiterated that steps toward denuclearisation would attract a significant economic response from Seoul. Pyongyang, however, will probably regard any distraction from the DPRK-US axis as unacceptable. Where the US might find the leverage to incline Pyongyang to walk back from its new course is difficult to gauge. China is best placed to signal to Pyongyang that it can make its recent policy choices extremely costly, but Beijing is likely to continue to prefer to string the process out indefinitely, so long as it judges that conflict remains a remote risk. And time, of course, is on the side of the DPRK.

The available evidence suggests that Pyongyang is experiencing great difficulty building even nuclear test devices (let alone deployable warheads) and a reliable missile that could deliver them to regional targets. Given time, it will do better on both fronts, and probably re-constitute its capacity to produce fissile material. And all the while Pyongyang’s possession of a nuclear weapon capacity of some kind will be raising tensions and feeding into the medium and longer-term security assessments of neighbouring states.