June is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

Thread: "By Our Nation Itself" : North Korea calls for REUNIFICATION by June 15th?

But there is also an external focus to the actions. The announcement of a withdrawal from the 1953 Armistice Agreement in the short term may be intended to apply further pressure on South Korea, but in the longer term it is directed at the United States. When North Korea concludes its current 150-day drive (during which it will likely carry out another long-range missile test and possibly another nuclear test), Pyongyang will once again make itself available for negotiations with the United States. This time, North Korea is looking to shift the topic of talks away from denuclearization and toward the status of relations with the United States.

The armistice agreement was technically only a cease-fire, not a peace accord, and South Korea is not even a signatory to the deal, choosing at the time not to accept a divided Korea by signing. By claiming the Armistice Agreement is now null and void, Pyongyang first and foremost brings the question of war or peace to the negotiating table with Washington. North Korea does not want to talk nuclear disarmament. Instead, it wants to talk normalization of relations. The nuclear program, while serving as a useful tool for encouraging negotiations, has thus distracted from Pyongyang’s main intent.

When Kim Jong Il is more confident of his re-arrangements of the elite in Pyongyang, and when the current 150-day drive is complete, North Korea will again open channels for dialogue. It will focus primarily on bilateral talks with the United States, not the multilateral six-party format. Pyongyang had tried to time its 2003 nuclear crisis to force a replacement of the Armistice Agreement around the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War. But it failed for multiple reasons, not least of which was the misreading of U.S. security views following the 9/11 attacks. Pyongyang is now looking at a new symbolic date, the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War next June. And this time, North Korea intends to make sure the stakes are higher and the focus is centered on the status of the peace accord.