MEMO FROM SEOUL: "Latest Threats May Mean North Korea Wants to Talk," by Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, 20 November 2008.

In the end, North Korea never wants to deal: as a true totalitarian state, it wants to preserve state power and prerogative at all costs. So the usual deal with the DPRK is that it goes nasty on either the local or distant devil (South Korea v. USA) and then goes nice with the other, so it can negotiate the best possible gain from one end while keeping the other in a state of complete anxiety. So when it's being all "sunshiney" with the South, it picks fights with us, or vice versa. The policy is known as "tongmi bonnam," according to the article, but it's basically wedge-driving. The point of the piece: all the recent nastiness to the South indicates that North Korea is getting ready to restart the dealmaking with the U.S. Obvious timing would be the new president, but then there's the additional overlay of Kim's recent bad health, even as the latter is likely to make Pyongyang more recalcitrant to actually deal in the short term. We can only guess at what the surviving leadership will be ready to deal on once Kim passes and nobody's interested in any of his kids moving up (or if one does, what sort of in-fighting breaks out among that same leadership, resulting in similar dynamics). Still, every expert makes the same argument: Pyongyang sees the US relationship as paramount over the Seoul one, so when it's ready to truly cut a deal to stave off internal collapse, it'll be with us and not them (Why? They want assurance they won't be dismantled if humanitarian rescue occurs.). Since the US basically wants China to be absent from any collapse intervention (we want promises that no PLA will cross the border), there's little surprise that Beijing isn't interested in getting in line behind our leadership. Indeed, if anything, this whole dynamic encourages Seoul and Beijing to cut a side deal on how this goes down to their particular preferences. At the very least, all indications are that Beijing is playing a game of letting out of the air from the balloon toward the northern border, guaranteeing them some role and thus say when the collapse comes. In sum, when you're talking a distressed property, everybody's looking for the cheapest deal.