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