These days North Korea’s rhetoric is low (but still in the background) and brinksmanship is simmering on the backburner. Instead, Six-Party Talks meetings are described as “business like” by Americans and cooperative by the IAEA, North Korea is claiming it will, “‘transparently disclose all our nuclear programs and nuclear facilities,’” and of course the delayed but upcoming Roh-Kim summit in Pyongyang. Even the natural disaster of flooding (though aided by deforestation, i.e., poor land management) has garnered some sympathy from South Koreans.

Things appeared to be going well for North Korea five years ago, too:

Over the summer of 2002 North Korea reportedly made several fundamental changes to the operation of its socialist economic system… [announced] plans to repatriate Japanese Red Army Faction [3] members who hijacked a Japanese airliner to North Korea in 1970, and who have been living in North Korea ever since… [Kim Jong-il] admitted to visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korea had indeed abducted twelve Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s… [and] in late September, North Korea announced the creation of a special economic zone (SEZ) in Sinuiju…

In 2002 North Korea’s motives for appearing to be cooperative appeared to have been disingenuous attempts to gain additional aid, particularly the colonial reparations that would have occurred had ties with Japan finally been established, removal from the U.S. list of terrorist nations, etc.

If North Korea fully cooperates with the IAEA and fulfills obligations set out under Six-Party Talks agreements (virtually no chance of this occurring under Kim Jong-il), they would again seek the rewards listed above (and perhaps influence elections in Seoul with the summit). But it appears North Korea has a short-term reason to play nice, at least for awhile:

North Korea’s destitute economy sank further last year and is weaker than it was about 18 years ago, with one analyst warning on Thursday that if the Communist state did not change course, it would be trapped in poverty.

[. . .]

[South Korea’s central bank… estimated that its reclusive neighbor’s gross domestic product fell by 1.1 percent in 2006, ending seven years of growth.

Full disclosure of its nuclear – plutonium and uranium based – programs is an obstacle for North Korea, probably an insurmountable one. I’d thought there would be several delays before that central issue, but the recent flooding and downturn in the economy may keep North Korea’s brinksmanship out of play until the disclosure issue erupts.