'There was partial progress,' say officials of N. Korea and the U.S. October. 24, 2016 07:19. by 워싱턴=이승헌, 도쿄=서영아특파원 특파원ddr@donga.com,sya@donga.com.

It has been said that North Korean diplomats met with the U.S. officials for two days staring from Friday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and demanded the U.S. to recognize the North as a nuclear power and to sign a peace treaty again. Dr. Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), held talks with North Korea’s vice foreign minister Han Song Ryol and other delegates. The North Korea expert told reporters Saturday that the North stressed that a peace treaty and peace process should precede moving on to address its nuclear and missile program.

There was partial progress in the talks and he expected no official dialogue with the North under the Obama administration, but that a new U.S. government needs to reconsider policies toward the North, Dr. Sigal said.

As an informal channel, we are working on items with regard to the policy toward the North they could offer to the new administration, he also said. The U.S. part included Robert Gallucci, who led the 1994 nuclear freeze deal with Pyongyang, former U.S. deputy envoy for the six-party talks Joseph R. DeTrani, while the North Korea part, the North's deputy ambassador to the United Nations Jang Il Hun and Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol attended the meeting.

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that the North intended to explore the upcoming administration’s policy toward the country and its stance was interpreted as to show heightened tensions with the U.S. and South Korea while sticking to its position on the nuclear program.

However, both South Korea and the U.S. did not put much emphasis on the recent talk. The two sides considered that this talk was nothing more than track 2 dialogues (nongovernmental talks) between North Korean diplomats and the ex-U.S. officials. A diplomatic source of Washington said that the U.S. government’s policy toward the North was basically focused on restraints rather than dialogue and the government and defense department were not deeply involved in the talk. A source of Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed that the U.S. government was not related to the talk. The source said that there were other track 2 dialogues this year, while North Korean Foreign Ministry's deputy director Choi Sun-hee met with Victor Cha Victor Cha who holds the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that no meaningful results have been made.