Seoul (AFP) May 24, 2012
 Team Kim... |
Two senior US officials made a secret visit to North Korea in an apparent attempt to persuade it to cancel last month's long-range rocket launch, a South Korean report said Thursday.
A US Air Force Boeing 737 flew from Guam to Pyongyang with the officials on April 7, six days before the failed launch went ahead, Chosun Ilbo newspaper cited a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying.
Experts speculate the aircraft carried Sydney Seiler, a National Security Council adviser to President Barack Obama, and Joseph DeTrani, director of the National Counter-Proliferation Centre, it said.
The report was one of several carried by South Korean media, although government officials and the US State Department have refused to comment.
Yonhap news agency also said the plane carried DeTrani.
The United Nations Security Council condemned the April 13 launch as breaching a ban on testing ballistic missile technology, and tightened sanctions on North Korea.
Pyongyang insists its aim was only to put a satellite into orbit for peaceful purposes.
It says the launch did not breach a February agreement with the United States that promised a suspension of uranium enrichment and a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests in return for 240,000 tonnes of food aid.
After the launch plan was announced, the United States said it would suspend the start of food deliveries.
A North Korean foreign ministry statement released Tuesday carried an apparent reference to the reported US visit.
It said Pyongyang had informed Washington "several weeks ago" that it was exercising restraint and was "taking the concerns voiced by the US into consideration".
The North in Tuesday's statement vowed to bolster its nuclear deterrent and take "self-defence" measures unless the US halts criticism and pressure.
But it said a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue was still possible if Washington drops its "hostile" policy.
In 2006 and 2009 the North responded with nuclear tests after the UN imposed sanctions against its rocket launches.
Tensions with South Korea have also been high following the North's virulent criticism of Seoul's leaders in recent months.
The verbal barrage is a sign of the regime's instability as new leader Kim Jong-Un bolsters his authority, a Seoul minister said.
"The reason why North Koreans criticise South Korea ever more strongly, we believe, is an expression of anxiety," Unification Minister Yu Woo-Ik told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview published Thursday.
The untested Jong-Un, aged in his late 20s, took over after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il last December and began reshaping the government line-up.
Individuals and organisations who fear their jobs are at risk are competing to show loyalty, partly by criticising the South, said the minister, who oversees cross-border relations.
The North in recent months has mounted an unusually extreme campaign of personal abuse against the South's President Lee Myung-Bak and other officials.
It has termed him a rat and "human scum", among a variety of other insults, and threatened "sacred war" to wipe out Seoul's rulers.
Yu said the North's tone would remain strong for the time being.
"I expect this kind of fidelity race will fade away as authority gets stabilised and anxiety is removed," he said, adding Seoul is still open to dialogue.
By Spacedaily
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