“Smoke With Fire”:
As ever in North Korea it is hard to know what is going through the minds of the men giving the orders. “Nobody knows exactly what they are thinking,” says an official in South Korea’s foreign ministry, “but a return to six party talks could be part of it.” This would fit in with North Korea’s apparent long-term strategy of threatening their way to the negotiating table, extracting concessions, and then repeating the process again and again. Already this week, officials from the other five countries involved have discussed resuming the talks.
