Hurdles to Talks High After North Korea Threats After weeks of fiery rhetoric, military posturing and threats that it's willing to strike back hard if provoked, North Korea appears to be taking a bit of a breather. The U.S.-South Korea war games it despises are winding down, and feelers are out in diplomatic circles that it might be best to open up some avenue for dialogue. If that sounds familiar, it should - it's a pattern that has been repeated for decades. So here's the question: Can we talk? From back-door channels to multinational conferences, dialogue has repeatedly been tried in a long-running effort to get North Korea to put the brakes on its development of nuclear weapons. Generally, hopes sputter and fade when North Korea's talking partners are presented with what they consider impossible demands. North Korea, meanwhile, has moved slowly but surely ahead with its nuclear program. The current crisis has played out with the added uncertainty of just how far North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un, is willing to take the brinksmanship. Amid continued fears it may test-launch a mid-range missile, North Korea two weeks ago opened the door, just a tiny crack, to talks. First it laid out a list of conditions for dialogue. Then it eased up on the near-daily war threats that had characterized its public statements, possibly signaling a willingness to dial the tensions back, particularly after the U.S.-South Korea drills, which were set to end Tuesday. In a subtle shift in tone, North Korea issued these preconditions on April 16 for resuming talks: the lifting of U.N. sanctions, the end of the U.S.-South Korea military drills, the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear strike capabilities from the region and a halt to criticism of North Korea. It then reiterated a demand to South Korea to apologize for offending its leadership before any talk of dialogue to defuse tensions. South Korea's Foreign Ministry called North Korea's demands illogical, but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was "at least a beginning," though "not acceptable, obviously." The U.S. remains open to "authentic and credible negotiations," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters soon afterward, but he noted that the U.S. has not seen any commitment from North Korea that it is willing to end its nuclear program. Getting North Korea to do that seems highly unlikely, especially now that it is claiming nuclear weapons are an essential part of its national defense. But advocates of diplomacy say it still must play a role. Obama and South Korea's President Park Geun-hye are scheduled to meet in Washington next week to discuss their policies toward Pyongyang. "A new diplomatic offensive, which might open an avenue to peaceful resolution of the current crisis, would demonstrate that the United States understands that exercising leadership means more than just flexing military muscle," Joel Wit, a former State Department arms control negotiator, and Jenny Town, a research associate at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, recently wrote in an article posted online by Foreign Policy magazine. What's the alternative? More threats, more instability and possibly even a war that nobody wants. It remains an open debate what North Korea's intentions were to begin with.