HONG KONG -- Strange as it may seem, there was an unofficial American group in Pyongyang on July 5, when North Korea conducted a series of missile tests. Stranger still is that a key North Korean official spoke to them quite frankly about what he thought of China, ostensibly Pyongyang's ally.
"With respect to our missile launch, I am awaiting responses from other parties," Kim Gye Gwan, vice foreign minister and North Korea's delegate to the six-party talks, told the Americans. "What I hear is Big Brother saying to Little Brother, 'Don't do that!' But we are not a little boy. We have nuclear weapons."
North Korea's missile launches and the unanimous Security Council resolution condemning it 10 days later have seriously complicated the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. Barring an unexpected turn of events, the chances of reviving the six-party talks are now remote and Beijing's influence over Pyongyang has greatly diminished.