September saw the ten year anniversary of the start of the Six Party Talks, a multilateral framework developed in 2003 to denuclearize North Korea and abandoned by Pyongyang when it quit talks in 2008. While there is much consensus among experts that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, Beijing nevertheless celebrated the anniversary by hosting an international workshop on reviving the talks, inviting attendees from all six participating member states.

But although major players like the U.S. and South Korea chose not to send senior negotiators to the workshop, North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim used the event to reiterate that Pyongyang was "ready to enter the six-party talks without preconditions". Nevertheless, senior envoys from the U.S. and South Korea continue to insist that they won't take part in "talks for talks' sake" and that Pyongyang must first show a tangible commitment to abandoning nuclear arms if it wants substantive talks.