North Korean breakthroughs

last updated 8 January 2015

Beijing

North Korea agreed this week to rejoin the U.N. nuclear watchdog umbrella, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Pyongyang will join the IAEA right after it dismantles its nuclear facilities, as it agreed to do in a landmark deal last month. The U.S. also made a concession: It agreed to release $25 million in North Korean assets frozen in a Macau bank. Negotiations with Japan, though, aren’t going so well. Japan has insisted that North Korea come clean about Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s, while North Korea has said Japan should apologize for colonizing it in the early 20th century. With six countries—North and South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Russia, and China—involved in the talks in Beijing, such bilateral issues keep delaying progress.