Negotiations with North Korea may restart, but to what end?

North Korea has stepped gingerly to the brink of a dreaded second Korean war. Now the question is whether there's a face-saving way to bring about dialogue so the North can, in effect, declare a rhetorical victory and go into negotiations.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, in his recent trip to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo, has intimated that it hardly matters how, where or in what format the talks are held. He did say, however, that North Korea has to move towards giving up its nuclear programme.

The critical word there is how far North Korea has to "move". Pyongyang has said it will never give up its nukes despite agreements reached in 2007 that seemed to have provided specific conditions for doing just that. The betting is that we would be deluding ourselves if we thought North Korea at this stage would abandon its programme.

That does not mean, however, that talks, or talks about talks, cannot begin. Nor does it mean that North Korea has to go on holding a nuclear club over the region - even over the United States, if we are to believe some of the threats about strikes at the White House and Pentagon.

The US, more than ever, is emphatically hitting the ball into China's court. In his stopover in Beijing, Kerry pleaded with Chinese leaders to lean on the North Koreans, who count on China for their survival. China, after all, is the source of 80 per cent of North Korea's fuel - most of the rest comes from coal mined in the North - and half its food. Wouldn't China have ultimate power over North Korea, a protectorate in a real sense of the word?

Not exactly. China's top priority remains that of peace and stability.

By maintaining the status quo, China has the best of both halves of the bifurcated Korean nation. China, as South Korea's biggest trading partner, enjoys a sizeable balance of trade with the South and also counts on South Korea for investment and expertise.