During that time, there was no diplomatic flurry, no secret connections to get talks going.
The only way to get a message to him these days is to shout through a loudhailer across the border. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping can’t get through.
This month, Xi sent a special envoy to North Korea — Song Tao, the head of the international liaison department of the communist party. His official mission was to report on the 19th congress of the Chinese party, to comrades in the Workers’ Party.
But Song was widely believed to have been sent to convey a message from Xi to Kim.
Song did not even secure an audience with Kim.
His most senior-level encounter was with a vice-chairman of the Workers’ Party.
Global Times said while “party-to-party communication remains open … the two countries are still poles apart on the nuclear issue”.
South Korea’s government has no way to connect with its neighbour. The communication channels used in the past have been cut by Pyongyang, ensuring Kim continues to hold all the keys to his kingdom.
The only phone and fax line between the two Koreas was ripped out by Pyongyang in February last year, when the Kaesong joint industrial zone was closed by Seoul in response to the North’s fourth nuclear test.
Even if a link existed, Seoul no longer knows who it might talk to. The senior officials who were its first point of contact have all been reassigned, retired, or worse.
Oh Choong-suk, director of the international co-operation division of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said: “We have lost all communication channels with the North.”
Instead, a ministry official has to shout repeatedly through a loudhailer to North Korean soldiers at the demilitarised zone.
This occurred most recently when the body of a North Korean fisherman washed up on a South Korean shore. It took a lot of shouting, said Oh, before the North opened a gate to allow the remains to be passed back.
In July, the South Korean Red Cross attempted to set up a meeting with its North Korean counterpart, to resume family reunions.
It is now 64 years since the Koreas split, and Oh said a growing number of South Koreans “have died without ever meeting again their separated family members in the North”.
No response.
The North has been invited to participate in the Winter Olympics to be held in February at PyeongChang in South Korea. Again, no reply.
Kan Choi, the vice-president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, told The Australian that South Korean President Moon Jae-in “has suffered criticism both for buying more weapons from the US, and for seeking to appease North Korea”. Moon believes it is the time for pressure on the North, not for dialogue, even if such a route were open.
Choi does not expect any resolution of the core nuclearisation issue any time soon: “Kim has completely consolidated his power base there. There was no sign of an emerging generation coming through into the leadership during the recent Workers’ Party congress.”
Moon wants to use the Olympics as a turning point, he said. “But I don’t think it can work.”
Kim is using the tests as “the most reliable tool to justify his leadership”.
China, he said, has reduced the flow of crude oil through the Friendship Pipeline by about 30 per cent. The cutting of coal exports as sanctions hit has, however, provided an alternative fuel for power.
James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, said in Beijing that most testing by Pyongyang usually comes in the first nine months of the year — after which it’s possible that the budget has been mostly spent. So the recent gap in tests was predictable.
As soon as people start talking about clear-cut “solutions”, he said, it shows they don’t understand the dimensions of the problem, which is like a series of interlocking puzzles.
Doug Paal, vice-president for studies at Carnegie, who was director of Asian Affairs for US presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, revealed in Beijing that Pyongyang had approached him this year “to talk about talks”.
They wanted to know, he said, “what Donald Trump was up to, whether he really meant that he wanted to have a hamburger with Kim Jong-un … whether they might at last have an interlocutor to deal with in Washington.” After eight visits from North Korean representatives, Paal said, they asked him to visit Pyongyang — without saying whether he would meet anyone with real authority.
“There was no clear answer,” so he let the contact fade away.
That is the story of the prospect of talks: a very uneasy silence.
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