Incentives won’t push North Korea to give up nuclear weapons

SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Yonhap) — An incentive-oriented approach won’t help the world reach its goal of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, a high-profile defector who served Pyongyang said Thursday. “We should not think that giving incentives to North Korea will help resolve Pyongyang’s nuclear issue,” Thae Yong-ho, a former diplomat who arrived in South Korea last year, told a forum in Seoul. He was at the gathering as a panelist, a first for him since his defection. Thae said that no matter how appealing incentives are, North Korea will not accept them if Pyongyang judges they do not benefit the one-man rule of its leader Kim Jong-un.