Mood in Pyongyang sour after U.N. resolution

North Korea's traffic police are well-dressed for duty.

Officials trying to assess potential damage from U.N. censure

The mood among North Korean officials appears to have become quite gloomy since the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1695 last week, if recent comments by a North Korean diplomat in Beijing are any indication.

An official with the North Korean mission in Beijing told the Hankyoreh on Tuesday that while "entirely a personal view," he feels a sense of crisis and tension and thinks "the Bush administration’s policy is very wrong for not making a way out available" for Pyongyang’s leadership. He said officials in Pyongyang are busy analyzing the potential effects of the Security Council resolution.

"When you see no way out, don’t you have no choice but to take other actions? Is there not the saying that says a mouse will bite a cat when he’s cornered?" The official seemed to be hinting at the prospect of further missile tests.

According to the official, the largest effects of the Security Council resolution will be financial sanctions and limits on transactions for missile parts. While financial sanctions are not particularly new to the North, he said, "all sorts of materials go into missiles, from special metals to bean oil and cotton." Limits relating to missiles, therefore, "could have the same effect as the financial measures."

"Items such as nitric acid and alcohol go into missiles but are also used for civilian and industrial use, so if the nations of the West put controls on those, the situation could be serious," he said, adding that officials in Pyongyang "are busy trying to determine whether the country can endure such a situation."

Saying that direct forms of pressure the United States could put on North Korea would include economic, air, and sea blockades, he predicted Pyongyang would react militarily "because as seen in the war in Iraq, a sea and air blockade is no different from war since it is action taken immediately prior to the use of military force."

However, when asked whether there is discord between Beijing and Pyongyang after the U.N. resolution was supported by China, he said China would always oppose measures that are similar in nature to military action, such as a blockade. "There has been no change in the basic framework" of the Sino-North Korean relationship, he said.