The second issue is to make clear whether the form and topics of the six-party talks should be complex or simplified. For a long time, the nuclear issue has been mixed up with other issues involving North Korea. As a result, when realizing the complication of the North Korea issue, some concerned parties wished to solve all the related issues in one effort. Therefore, they started to set a series of plans on politics, economy, diplomacy, security, friendliness and cooperation. With all these issues combined together, the situation was made too complicated to handle, which led to the failure of negotiations between the United States and North Korea, and the negotiations among China, the United States, North Korea and South Korea.

In fact, the principle of the six-party talks is to settle the Korean nuclear issue, but not all North Korea-related issues. The nuclear issue belongs to the security category, and the solution to this should be limited to the security category only. Any presumption or arrangement exceeding the security framework will lead to complication. Since North Korea claimed that the reason it insisted on developing nuclear weapons was because it believed its security was threatened by the United States, the issue should be settled through a U.S.-North Korea bilateral security agreement or regional multilateral security system, which means "abandoning nuclear programs for security." This is a clear and simple problem that can easily be settled. But the North Korea-related issues are much more complicated, because they concerns differences among countries, such as historical issues, cultural traditions, ideologies, strategic interests, policies and stipulations and even long-time existing biases, which are beyond the capability of the six-party talks.

If all these issues are linked with the nuclear issue and put on the negotiation table of six-party talks, the result undoubtedly is messy. For example, developing diplomatic relations between concerned nations should be an achievement that is made after the nuclear issue is resolved, but not a precondition of solving the issue. Besides, economic aid and cooperation are expressions of friendliness after relations have been established, but not the duties of other parties. Therefore, the six-party talks should be simplified and stick to the principle of "abandoning nuclear programs for security." The negotiators should not try to settle all the related problems with one single plan.