Cornered and isolated, North Korea seems to have given a sign that it is open to talks," said Go Myong-hyun, a senior research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank.
"After years of trying to solidify future negotiating power by fueling tensions with weapons tests, particularly last year, North Korea may have felt that it could gain more through talks now after realizing that there is little it could gain through more weapons tests."
This is nothing unusual, he noted. "For decades, North Korea has used a blend of the carrot and the stick in pursuit of its ultimate, unchanging goal of receiving the U.S. recognition as a nuclear state, a status which it believes will solve all of its significant problems," he said.
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