(November 19, 2009) SEOUL– President Barack Obama said he and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak aim to “break the pattern” in dealing with North Korea in which the regime in Pyongyang alternates between provocation and negotiation.

Obama said he will send his special envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to North Korea on Dec. 8 in an effort to resume the stalled six- party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program.

“The door is open to resolving these issues,” Obama said in a joint news conference with Lee in Seoul today. “But it will only happen if North Korea is taking serious steps” toward getting rid of its nuclear weapons program.

North Korea and a stalled U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement topped the agenda for Obama’s visit to Seoul, the final stop on the president’s eight-day trip to Asia. Talks over North Korea’s nuclear program with the U.S., Japan, China, Russia and South Korea stalled last year, and North Korea formally quit the forum to protest the UN condemnation of its April 5 firing of a rocket over the Sea of Japan.

Obama said he and Lee “agree on the need to break a pattern that has existed in the past in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion; it then is willing to return to talks; it talks for a while, and then it leaves the talks seeking further exceptions and is never actually making progress on the core issues.”

Return to Talks

North Korea is running a “highly sophisticated” global arms smuggling enterprise to finance its nuclear weapons program, a United Nations panel said in a report assessing the effectiveness of sanctions imposed on the regime. Arms sales banned by the UN “have increasingly become one of the country’s principal sources for obtaining foreign exchange,” it said.

North Korea has used “reputable shipping entities, misdescription of goods and multiple transfers” to hide arms smuggling, according to the report, which has been circulated within the Security Council and was obtained by Bloomberg News. It has not yet been publicly released. The council is set to discuss the findings today in New York.

Bosworth, the special U.S. representative for North Korean policy, is being dispatched to press the regime to fulfill a 2005 agreement for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and return to multinational negotiations. Obama announced the date for Bosworth’s trip for the first time today.

China “supports and welcomes the bilateral dialogue between the U.S. and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing. Qin said the bilateral talks would be held under the framework of the six-party negotiations.

The U.S. also is trying to make progress on another confrontation over nuclear weapons with Iran. Obama said the U.S. and its partners in those talks are working on ways to pressure Iran to accept a proposal intended to thwart the development of nuclear arms.

Iran’s foreign minister has rejected a United Nation’s plan to ship low-enriched uranium out of the country for reprocessing, another setback to attempts at negotiating an agreement. France, Russia and the U.S. have agreed to the plan, which would supply a Tehran research reactor that makes medical isotopes. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottak said it may be possible if the exchange takes place inside the country.

Obama said at the news conference that Iran is making itself “less secure” by not responding formally to the offer by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency.

Possible Sanctions

“Over the next several weeks we will be developing a package” of potential sanctions against Iran, he said, without elaborating. Negotiations with Iran don’t want to duplicate what has happened with North Korea “in which talks just continue forever without any actual resolution to the issue.”

Obama was welcomed to the Blue House, the South Korean equivalent of the White House, with a formal ceremony that Obama called the most spectacular of his Asian trip, which included stops in Japan, Singapore and China. Lee told him that he saved “the best for last.”

The two presidents met privately for about 90 minutes before addressing reporters.

Before leaving South Korea, Obama addressed U.S. military personnel at Osan Air Base outside Seoul before flying back to Washington later today.

He said the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea “will never waver” and that he won’t hesitate to use force to defend “vital interests.”

“But I will also not risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary,” he said. “And when it is, America will back you up to the hilt.”

Afterward, Obama boarded Air Force One for his return trip to Washington.

By Edwin Chen and Julianna Goldman
Bloomberg