The United States is set to hold talks with North Korea in Beijing next Thursday, the third of their kind aimed at restarting the stalled six-nation negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

As a U.S. State Department spokeswoman put it, the talks are “a continuation of the meetings” that the United States has been holding with an evasive, cunning North Korea to see if it is prepared to fulfill its past commitments to denuclearization.

Given the remarks, the United States does not appear to pin high hopes on the Beijing meeting. But it cannot be blamed for its lack of enthusiasm, given that the meet is basically talks about talks, not about substance. Reopening the six-way disarmament talks is one thing, and producing tangible results is quite another.

But the forthcoming round of talks, the first to be held since North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died on Dec. 17, may prove to be more than a mere continuation its tiresome predecessors. Instead, it may provide the United States with an opportunity to determine where the post-Kim North is headed on the issue of denuclearization.

Of paramount concern to the United States is whether or not the North, under the rule of Kim’s untested young son, would abandon its nuclear ambitions given the right incentives. As such, the United States should not limit itself to taking up where it left off in the previous talks with North Korea when talks are held in Beijing. Instead, it will be well advised to seek to discuss other issues of concern to North Korea, including its request for food aid.

The United States and North Korea had two rounds of talks on suspending North Korea’s uranium-enrichment program and resuming the six-way talks, in New York in July and in Geneva in October. The third round, originally scheduled to be held in Beijing on Dec. 22, was put on hold when Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack.

One day prior to Kim’s death, they came close to an accord on the U.S provision of food aid to the impoverished communist state ― a deal which was apparently intended to encourage Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table.

Three years have passed since North Korea pulled out of the nuclear disarmament talks in protest against the U.N. Security Council’s censure of its rocket test. It has since warned of an intercontinental ballistic missile test, conducted its second nuclear test and announced its launch of a uranium-enrichment program.

The U.S. effort to make North Korea nuclear-free dates back to early 1994 when the communist state unloaded spent fuel from its disputed nuclear research facility in Yongbyon. But Kim Il-sung agreed to stop the nuclear research program when he met former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Pyongyang in June in the same year. In October, the United States and North Korea concluded an Agreed Framework on replacing the North Korean nuclear power plant with a safer light-water reactor of South Korean manufacture.

The replacement project launched under the Agreed Framework was abandoned when the United States claimed that North Korea was conducting a uranium-enrichment program in October 2002.

Discussions resumed in August 2003, this time in the format of multi-nation talks involving South Korea, China, Japan and Russia as well as the United States and North Korea. The negotiators produced a preliminary accord on Sept. 19, 2005, which made no mention of the U.S. allegation about the uranium-enrichment program. Little progress had been made by the time the talks broke down in 2009.

As the brief overview shows, the North Korean offer to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program has been a charade. No wonder the United States, South Korea and Japan have demanded time and again that North Korea demonstrate its sincerity in abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

In this regard, China will have to join those countries in putting pressure on a wayward North Korea to make good on its commitments, instead of limiting its role to facilitating negotiations. Many will question the wisdom of continuing talks with North Korea should it prove to be as unruly as it has been in the past.