WASHINGTON -- This fall much attention will be focused on the start of six-party multilateral talks in Beijing to stop North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. These talks, should they take place as committed to by Pyongyang last week, are a welcome development. For the first time in more than a decade, a discussion of nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula will finally include South Korea.
However, a potentially more important set of events will parallel these talks in Beijing. These events could have far-reaching implications for the Peninsula and the world, yet they will exclude South Korea. This autumn, countries that are members of the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, will likely begin exercises in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to practice search and seizure operations against the transfer of materials for weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
These activities could represent the beginning of a new global norm, but they will bypass South Korea -- despite its national aspirations to become a player on the world stage -- because Seoul cannot look past its own preoccupations.