Tag: Pyongyang

What are the united states-South Korea war games?

Image copyright Getty Photographs Image caption US and South Korean troops apply a seashore touchdown

Joint military exercises among US and South Korean troops have long angered Pyongyang. US President Donald Trump says he has now agreed with North Korean chief Kim Jong-un to cancel them.

because the finish of the Korean conflict, when Washington fought alongside Seoul towards the North, the us has had troops stationed in South Korea.

Approximately 29,000 US soldiers are based totally within the South, under a safety agreement reached after the warfare ended in 1953.

Each yr, the 2 nations conduct military drills, referred to as struggle video games.

Washington has defined the drills as protecting in nature, however Pyongyang says they’re a practice session for invasion and has lengthy called for them to finish.

Image copyright South Korean Defence Ministry Symbol caption This year, the drills were postponed

Over the years, state media has described them as pouring “gas on fireplace” and risking an “uncontrollable segment of a nuclear struggle”.

This 12 months, the spring exercise was postponed in order not to overlap with the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

As part of the inter-Korean thaw, the Video Games have been attended by way of North Korea and there has been worry the army workout may jeopardise the rapprochement.

The drills went ahead in April as an alternative.

US troops in Japan, Guam

North Korea could also be angered by way of the presence of us troops in other portions of Asia, such a lot significantly in Japan. There also are joint US-Japanese drills per annum.

Both in South Korea and Japan, there are mixed views on the army exercises.

At The Same Time As many support the shut military co-operation with the united states as a key ally for the safety it supplies, critics say they’re an unnecessary provocation and stand in the means of easing tensions with Pyongyang.

the united states additionally has a robust military base on the Pacific island of Guam, a US territory and a keystone of yank army strategy within the area.

Image copyright Reuters Symbol caption The Pacific island of Guam is home to the us Air Force’s Andersen air base Overlooked chance to speak about human rights, says defector Did the summit rhetoric match reality? Kim is a ‘funny guy’ – analysing Trump’s prices

Sooner Than the surprising thaw between Pyongyang and the u.s., North Korea had again and again threatened to focus on US troops in the region.

In August 2017, Pyongyang threatened missile strikes on Guam, the only US territory easily in succeed in of North Korean missiles.

At The Same Time As Pyongyang says it has intercontinental ballistic missiles that may succeed in the us mainland, Guam is in achieve of medium-to-long-vary rockets.

China pleased, allies surprised

On 12 June President Trump introduced the u.s. might stop its battle games with South Korea in a concession made to Kim Jong-un after the two held direct talks in Singapore.

Echoing North Korean language, Mr Trump defined the army workout routines as “very provocative”.

“We Can prevent the battle games for you to keep us an incredible quantity of cash,” the united states president mentioned at the press conference after the talks.

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Media captionTrump Kim summit: Win-win, or a Kim win?

The transfer perceived to take US allies within the area – besides because the country’s military – through wonder.

South Korea’s Presidential Blue House mentioned it needed “to search out out the appropriate that means or intentions” of Mr Trump’s statement.

President Moon Jae-in spoke by way of telephone with Mr Trump for 20 minutes overdue on Tuesday, however an reputable readout of the call made no mention of military exercises, in line with Reuters.

US military commanders in the South additionally said they had no caution of Mr Trump’s announcement.

Even As the tip of the warfare video games is granting Pyongyang one in every of its key calls for, it may be in line with China’s calls to prevent the workouts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Mr Trump’s surprise determination has on the other hand been met with warning in Japan.

The country’s defence minister, Itsunori Onodera, stated drills and the u.s. military presence in South Korea were “necessary to security in East Asia”.

There are not any plans to droop the yearly workout routines with Japan.

(more…)

August 30, 2018
Trump accuses China of stalling growth with North Korea

Symbol copyright AFP Symbol caption ‘It’s all China’s fault’ says Trump

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at China for undermining its paintings with North Korea, as complaint over development on denuclearisation mounts.

In a sequence of tweets he additionally said the united states can not be spending on battle games with South Korea, but when it did restart them they would be “bigger than ever”.

The U.s. referred to as a halt to the military workout routines which routinely infuriate Pyongyang after landmark talks in June.

However days in the past his own defence secretary said military workouts may continue.

the continuing debate in regards to the struggle games comes as many observers say North Korea is not shifting speedy sufficient to dismantle nuclear or rocket websites following the summit between Mr Trump and North Korean chief Kim Jong-un in June.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Downside solved – in step with Mr Trump after his June summit with Kim Jong-un N Korea ‘making missiles’ regardless of US thaw Tears and pleasure as Korean households reunite

Simply days in the past, Washington known as off a trip to North Korea by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the president arguing that insufficient development have been made in dismantling the North’s nuclear programme.

within the recent observation released on Twitter, Mr Trump says North Korea was once “under super power from China because of our top trade disputes with the Chinese Language government”.

Skip Twitter submit by means of @realDonaldTrump

STATEMENT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

President Donald J. Trump feels strongly that North Korea is below super force from China as a result of our leading business disputes with the Chinese Language Executive. At The related time, we also understand that China is offering North Korea with…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018

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End of Twitter submit through @realDonaldTrump

It additionally accuses Beijing of offering North Korea with “really extensive support,” suggesting Chinese assist used to be softening the blow of international sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang.

“This isn’t helpful!” Mr Trump’s tweet says.

The U.s. president is going on to insist his non-public courting with Kim Jong-un remained “an overly just right and heat one” and that hence there has been no explanation why to restart the “warfare games” with the South.

However he added that if they did restart, the workouts can be “bigger than ever”.

Referring again to the industry dispute with Beijing, Mr Trump says he is still optimistic it may well be resolved by himself and China’s “great President Xi Jinping”.

China to respond ‘resolutely’ to US tariffs Why the us-China industry dispute has mavens concerned

August 30, 2018
North Korea grants humanitarian release to Jap vacationer

Image copyright AFP Image caption Vacationers vacationing North Korea are closely monitored at all instances

North Korea has stated it is releasing a detained Eastern tourist on humanitarian grounds.

There could be very little information available on Tomoyuki Sugimoto, but he was once recognized to have been arrested earlier this month.

North Korea has no longer mentioned why he was arrested, best that he was breaking the law. Eastern media mentioned he could were filming a military facility.

Tourists traveling North Korea are strictly monitored at all instances.

The secretive united states of america has regularly jailed vacationers sooner than – on occasion for arbitrary reasons – and used them as bargaining gear in its negotiations with their home states.

Image copyright Reuters Symbol caption Otto Warmbier had travelled to North Korea with an American tour team

Japan and North Korea do not have any diplomatic relationship.

North Korea has a number of occasions used flight paths crossing Japanese territory to test its missiles, incomes condemnation from Tokyo.

And besides as joining such a lot of the arena in tough that Pyongyang abandon its missile and nuclear programme, Japan has repeatedly driven for info on Japanese electorate kidnapped by means of the North.

The electorate have been seized within the 1970s and 80s and forcibly taken to North Korea to train workforce in Eastern language and culture.

Japan has insisted there can be no development on sanctions aid or help to North Korea till the problem has been resolved.

August 27, 2018
North Korean restaurant body of workers defection was forced, supervisor says

Symbol copyright Getty Pictures Image caption North Korea is believed to operate dozens of eating places out of the country, corresponding to this one in Dubai

A Bunch of THIRTEEN North Korean eating place workforce who moved to the South in 2016 were pressured to defect through South Korean intelligence, their supervisor says.

Ho Kang-il instructed South Korea’s Yonhap information agency he have been blackmailed and that his 12 feminine employees didn’t recognise where they were being taken to when they left for Seoul.

The UN has known as for a “thorough” investigation into the case.

South Korea had in the past stated that the crowd defected voluntarily.

The eating place workers have been operating at a state-run North Korean established order in the Chinese town of Ningbo in 2016 when they left for the South.

at the time, a government official in Seoul said the gang had began to distrust North Korean propaganda after staring at South Korean television dramas.

The North Koreans longing for home The thriller of North Korea’s virtuoso waitresses South Koreans warned over North Korean restaurants

But in an interview published by Yonhap on Sunday, restaurant manager Ho Kang-il stated he have been running with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), who promised him that he could open a restaurant if he defected to the South.

He said that when he hesitated, the NIS began to blackmail him.

“They threatened that until I come to the South with the employees, they would divulge to the North Korean embassy that I had co-operated with the NIS till then. I had no selection however to do what they instructed me to,” he mentioned.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, advised reporters earlier this week that a few of the ladies had said they were dropped at the South “with out understanding they have been coming here” and called for an research.

North Korea is thought to function round ONE HUNDRED THIRTY restaurants abroad, which offer a helpful source of foreign exchange, and workers are decided on for their loyalty.

North Korean propaganda adjustments its tune

Doubts about the gang’s defection first emerged two months in the past when Mr Ho and three of the ladies, whose faces were blurred and their identities hidden, appeared on South Korean channel JTBC and said they were coerced into travelling to the South.

One of the ladies mentioned that Mr Ho had threatened to tell North Korean safety police that the ladies have been watching South Korean tv, a punishable offence within the repressive country.

Seoul’s unification ministry mentioned that the gang’s debts would need to be checked after the JTBC interview was once aired.

North Korea has constantly claimed that the crowd was kidnapped via the South. However Seoul, which remaining 12 months quadrupled its reward to defectors from the North to $860,000 (£650,000), insists that all defectors come voluntarily.

More than 30,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South over the previous 20 years, in step with the South Korean executive.

July 15, 2018
Donald Trump to meet with Kim Jong-un in May

President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May for historic talks on denuclearization, a senior South Korean official announced Thursday night.

President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May for historic talks on denuclearization, a senior South Korean official announced Thursday night.

South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong told reporters at the White House that Mr. Kim conveyed the invitation for a meeting with Mr. Trump after breakthrough talks this week between the North and South in Pyongyang.

Mr. Trump called the development “great progress” but vowed that the U.S. would not lift sanctions on North Korea while diplomacy is under way.

Mr. Chung said the North Korean leader “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in already had been scheduled to meet with the North Korean leader at a summit in April at the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Mr. Chung is part of a South Korean delegation visiting Washington following the talks this week in Pyongyang.

Mr. Chung said the North Korean leader is “committed to denuclearization” and that he pledged to refrain from any further nuclear weapons or ballistic missile tests. He said Mr. Kim also has accepted that the U.S. and South Korea will proceed with “routine” military exercises scheduled for next month.

“I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” Mr. Chung said, adding that he expressed Mr. Moon’s “personal gratitude” for Mr. Trump’s leadership on confronting Pyongyang.

Mr. Trump tweeted Thursday night about the sudden announcement: “Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!”

There has never been a face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the U.S. and North Korea. A senior administration official said Mr. Kim conveyed the message by word of mouth through the South Koreans that he wants to meet with Mr. Trump “as quickly as possible.”

The South Korean officials briefed Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other U.S. officials present.

The official said Mr. Trump agreed to meet with Mr. Kim “in a matter of a couple of months.”

While the U.S. has often made concessions to North Korea in return for lower-level talks, the official said that keeping sanctions in place “is what differentiates the president’s policy from the policies of the past.”

“President Trump has been very clear from the beginning that he is not prepared to reward North Korea in exchange for talks,” the aide said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Mr. Trump will meet with Mr. Kim “at a place and time to be determined.”

“We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain,” she said.

Mrs. Sanders said the president “greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and President Moon.”

Mr. McMaster is to brief U.N. Security Council envoys on North Korea on Monday, Reuters reported.

As the prospect of direct Trump-Kim talks has risen, analysts and U.S. intelligence officials have noted that the North Korean dictator, in his mid-30s, has had hardly any interactions with high-profile Americans. The exception is multiple meetings in recent years with former basketball star Dennis Rodman.

It’s a factor that has made it hard for U.S. intelligence to predict how Mr. Kim might behave in a meeting with Mr. Trump and created a challenge for officials tasked with briefing the president on what to expect.

Some analysts warned Thursday night that the risks remain incredibly high that hopes for diplomacy could fizzle on both the U.S. and North Korean side.

“We’d expect such an unprecedented meeting to happen after some concrete deliverables were in hand, not before,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow with the New America think tank in Washington.

While Ms. DiMaggio said that if the developments evolve into “a process for serious, sustained negotiations,” then Mr. Trump’s willingness to embrace North Korea’s reported offer will turn out to be a “positive move.”

“But it will have to be managed very carefully with a great deal of preparatory work,” she told The Times on Thursday night. “Otherwise, it runs the risk of being more spectacle than substance. Right now, Kim Jong-un is setting the agenda and the pace, and the Trump administration is reacting.”

“The administration needs to move quickly to change this dynamic,” Ms. DiMaggio said.

Analysts have also warned that there has yet to be an official offer for talks directly from the Kim regime — that all of the latest news developments on the situation have come through the South Korean government.

As of early Friday, Korean time, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency had not mentioned the events in Washington.

“There seems to be no direct message from North Korea to the U.S. government,” Michael Pillsbury, a Mandarin-speaking Pentagon consultant and head of Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, noted on Wednesday.

“This is all being filtered through the South Korean government,” said Mr. Pillsbury, adding that Chinese officials, who are generally regarded to be far more in touch than anyone else with goings-on in Pyongyang, have also been unsure about the South Korean claims of Mr. Kim’s eagerness to talk with Mr. Trump.

The Chinese government has yet to make an official statement on the situation, and the de facto newspaper of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing went so far as to question whether Mr. Kim’s offer to Mr. Trump really happened.

“North Korea still has not confirmed the South’s version of events,” stated an editorial in the Global Times, which also pointed out that Pyongyang’s official state newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, had asserted in its editorial that the Kim regime plans to proceed with the “advance” of the nation’s “nuclear weaponry.”

Earlier Thursday, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson played down hopes for a breakthrough on North Korea’s nuclear program, saying the U.S. is a long way from negotiations after the country’s leader offered to give up his weapons in exchange for security guarantees.

“We’re a long way from negotiations; we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” Mr. Tillerson said during a stop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Mr. Moon’s office said Tuesday that the North had expressed a “willingness to hold a heartfelt dialogue with the United States on the issues of denuclearization” and “made it clear that while dialogue is continuing, it will not attempt any strategic provocations, such as nuclear and ballistic missile tests.”

China barely reacted to word of a possible thawing of relations.

U.S. officials believe that sanctions against North Korea are beginning to sting the communist country, which has staged multiple nuclear and ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Administration officials also have repeatedly pointed out that Mr. Kim has gone through the motions of talks with the U.S. previously, all the while continuing to refine his weapons programs.

Rep. Edward R. Royce, California Republican and House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said Mr. Kim’s desire for talks “shows sanctions the administration has implemented are starting to work.”

“We can pursue more diplomacy as we keep applying pressure ounce by ounce,” Mr. Royce said. “Remember, North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time. North Korea uses this to advance its nuclear and missile programs. We’ve got to break this cycle.”

Part of what made the announcement so unexpected is that from the start of his presidency, Mr. Trump has determined to take a more aggressive approach to North Korea than his predecessors.

He has taunted Mr. Kim on Twitter as “Little Rocket Man” and vowed last year that Pyongyang would be met with “fire and fury” if Mr. Kim followed through on threats to attack the U.S. mainland or its territories. Mr. Trump also has pressed China to adhere to harsh economic sanctions.

That history prompted one key Democrat to warn the U.S. president about diplomacy by Twitter.

Mr. Trump needs to “abandon his penchant for unscripted remarks and bombastic rhetoric to avoid derailing this significant opportunity for progress,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the East Asia panel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“And if the talks between the two leaders do not go well, it is not an excuse to justify military action for a situation that has no military solution,” Mr. Markey said.

Retired Rear Adm. John Kirby, who was a spokesman for the Pentagon and State Department in the Obama administration, said on CNN. “It certainly does feel like a different moment.”

He said Mr. Trump deserves credit for the announcement, though he also cited Seoul, saying Mr. Moon may be the most eager South Korean leader ever to produce a breakthrough with the North.

Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action, said Mr. Kim’s reported commitment not to test nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles during diplomacy “is excellent news, as is President Trump accepting Kim’s invitation to meet in person for the first time.”

“North Korea is putting virtually all topics of concerns on the table,” Mr. Martin said. “Trump now has the opportunity to achieve what no president has been able to achieve in seven decades of U.S.-North Korea relations: make real strides towards lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

• Guy Taylor contributed to this article.

March 10, 2018
Donald Trump takes credit for Kim Jong-un’s desire for talks

President Trump on Tuesday credited his campaign of maximum pressure — coupled with “great help” from China — for driving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sudden decision to raise the prospect of t

President Trump on Tuesday credited his campaign of maximum pressure — coupled with “great help” from China — for driving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sudden decision to raise the prospect of talks with Washington about his nation’s nuclear arsenal and to halt nuclear and missile tests while such negotiations play out.

In stunningly swift thawing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, Mr. Kim told a visiting South Korean delegation Tuesday that he was ready to hold a “candid discussion” with the Trump administration on denuclearization, that Pyongyang would freeze its nuclear and missile programs as the talks began, and that he was willing to join South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month for the first face-to-face meeting between the nations’ leaders in more than a decade.

With critical details of the North’s offer still to be nailed down, Mr. Trump expressed cautious optimism. He said he believed Mr. Kim’s overture during a meeting with South Korean officials was sincere, but he stressed that it “may be a false hope” to think Pyongyang would truly agree to give up its nuclear security blanket.

“We have come certainly a long way, at least rhetorically, with North Korea,” a cautious Mr. Trump said at a joint White House press conference with visiting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. “It’d be a great thing for the world, would be a thing great for North Korea, it would be a great thing for the peninsula. But we’ll see what happens.”

National security insiders said it’s too early to know whether Mr. Kim is just trying to buy time to complete Pyongyang’s covert nuclear program or whether Mr. Trump’s bare-knuckle policy approach — coupled with a U.S.-organized set of international sanctions that show signs of truly hurting the North’s economy — has produced unexpected progress.

One caveat evident in the text of the six-point accord brought back by the South Korean envoys: North Korea said it would have no need for nuclear weapons “as long as military threats to the North are eliminated and the regime’s security is guaranteed,” which could call into question the U.S.-South Korean military alliance and the huge U.S. troop presence in the South.

“Does the Trump administration deserve credit for sticking to a policy of maximum pressure while remaining open to engagement? Yes,” said Patrick Cronin, who heads the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “But the cause and effect here is not necessarily something you want to take credit for until you see how it turns out.”

The White House last month announced the sharpest U.S. sanctions to date against Pyongyang. While the increased pressure may have inspired Mr. Kim’s growing eagerness for talks, some point to other important factors at play.

“One is the progress that North Korea has made on its nuclear program …,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow with the New America think tank in Washington. “Kim Jong-un has declared the completion of his nuclear force and believes he now has the capacity to deter an attack by the U.S.

“So in terms of timing,” she said, “it makes great sense that the North Koreans are now ready to return to talks with Washington.”

The shift in Pyongyang

The South Korean president’s office said in a statement Tuesday that the Kim regime had expressed a willingness to denuclearization and to halt nuclear tests in order to get talks underway with Washington.

Chung Eui-yong, South Korea’s presidential national security director and head of the delegation that met with Mr. Kim, said the late-April summit will be held in Panmunjom, the tense border village where the two hostile Koreas have faced off since the inconclusive end of the Korean War in the 1950s.

The developments, which follow a flurry of North-South diplomacy that surrounded last month’s Winter Olympics in the South, appeared to mark a major shift from Pyongyang, which long refused to discuss its nuclear arsenal or missile programs.

The Trump administration had vacillated on whether it would be willing to engage in direct talks with North Korea if the Kim regime did not first commit to abandoning the programs. As recently as this past weekend, the North Korean Foreign Ministry had criticized Washington for clinging to the idea of denuclearization as a precondition for direct talks.

Efforts to rein in the isolated North’s military programs have repeatedly ended in failure.

Negotiations with Pyongyang broke down in 2009 amid a flurry of North Korean missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. At the height of the talks in 2005, Pyongyang signed an agreement with the U.S., Japan, China, Russia and South Korea stating that it was “committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.”

The White House offered a sober message on the denuclearization issue Tuesday, asserting that it is in no hurry to ease its campaign of maximum pressure and sanctions.

“Whichever direction talks with North Korea go, we will be firm in our resolve,” said Vice President Mike Pence. “All options are on the table, and our posture toward the regime will not change until we see credible, verifiable and concrete steps toward denuclearization.”

The comments coincided cautious but optimistic posturing from Mr. Trump. “We will see what happens!” the president tweeted.

The U.S. government, Mr. Trump added in an early morning tweet, “is ready to go hard in either direction!”

‘Me’

The president said there was little doubt that his combination of tough, even bellicose rhetoric and coordinated economic pressure had helped change the dynamic of the Korean Peninsula stalemate.

Asked at the White House briefing who was responsible for the North’s apparent turnaround, he responded: “Me.”

“I think [the North Koreans] are sincere also because the sanctions and what we are doing to North Korea, including the great help we’ve gotten from China,” he added.

Mr. Cronin said in an interview that Mr. Trump would be “right to dampen expectations and take it step by step in order to assess what North Korea’s real intentions are here.”

The North’s offer also put pressure on Washington to calibrate its own response, he said.

“The ball is in the president’s court at this point,” Mr. Cronin said.

Bruce Klingner, a former CIA division chief for the Koreas and a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, was among those who urged extreme caution on North Korea’s sudden willingness to talk about the future of its nuclear weapons.

“What we do know about North Korea,” Mr. Klingner wrote in an analysis Tuesday, “is that past offers of dialogue frequently prove to be a fig leaf for ulterior purposes.

“The real question: Is this a diplomatic breakthrough, or the setup of a Red Wedding?” said Mr. Klingner, referring to the famous massacre episode of the TV drama “Game of Thrones.”

The road ahead

The challenge for the Trump administration, said Mr. Cronin, is to keep the pressure on the Kim regime “while engagement takes a bigger step in this process.”

“Can we walk and chew gum at the same time? By all means, we have to,” he said. “We have to show agility because Kim has become more agile diplomatically.”

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told a congressional hearing Tuesday that U.S. intelligence officials are still trying to determine the sincerity of the North’s offer and Mr. Kim’s willingness to consider giving up his nuclear arsenal.

“We have seen nothing to indicate … that he would be willing to give up those weapons,” Mr. Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said he could not adequately assess the South’s account of the Pyongyang talks until the South Koreans have provided a full briefing, The Associated Press reported.

Ms. DiMaggio said Mr. Trump is hampered by a “very thin diplomatic bench” in any coming talks. There is no permanent ambassador in Seoul, the State Department point man on the North Korean crisis retired last week, and there’s been a “hollowing out” of State Department specialists on the region.

“If we head down this road of talks with North Koreans,” she said, “it’s going to be very challenging because we don’t have seasoned diplomats in place to carry it out.”

While the denuclearization issue could take years to fully resolve, Ms. DiMaggio said, the administration should seize on the opening for talks on a range of other issues, such as getting assurances from the Kim regime that it won’t sell chemical, biological or nuclear weapons material to U.S. enemies or terrorist groups.

“North Korea is the only nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. doesn’t have direct discussions,” she said. “Can we have talks on avoiding an accidental military conflict? That should top the agenda.”

• Dave Boyer contributed to this article.

March 7, 2018
South Korea meeting thrusts North’s Kim into the limelight

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on deferentially. He smiles broadly again at dinner, his wife at his side, the South Koreans seeming to hang on his every word.

Kim is used to being the center of gravity in a country that his family has ruled with unquestioned power since 1948, but the chance to play the senior statesman on the Korean Peninsula with a roomful of visiting South Koreans has afforded the autocratic leader a whole new raft of propaganda and political opportunities.

Photos released by North Korean state media Tuesday showing Kim meeting with the envoys are all the more remarkable coming just months after a barrage of North Korean weapons tests and threats against Seoul and Washington had many fearing war.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the images were reported in the North, but they spread rapidly across the southern part of the peninsula a day after Pyongyang said Kim had an “openhearted talk” in Pyongyang with 10 envoys for South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Kim reportedly expressed his desire to “write a new history of national reunification” during a dinner that Seoul said lasted about four hours.

The meeting Monday marked the first time South Korean officials have met with the young North Korean leader in person since he took power after his dictator father’s death in late 2011. It’s the latest sign that the Koreas are trying to mend ties after one of the tensest years in a region that seems to be permanently on edge.

Given the robust history of bloodshed, threats and animosity on the Korean Peninsula, there is considerable skepticism over whether the Koreas’ apparent warming relations will lead to lasting peace. North Korea, some believe, is trying to use improved ties with the South to weaken U.S.-led international sanctions and pressure, and to provide domestic propaganda fodder for Kim.

But each new development also raises the possibility that the rivals can use the momentum from the good feelings created during North Korea’s participation in the South’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last month to ease a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and restart talks between Pyongyang and Washington.

The role of a confident leader welcoming visiting, and lower-ranking, officials from the rival South is one Kim clearly relishes. Smiling for cameras, he posed with the South Koreans and presided over what was described by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency as a “co-patriotic and sincere atmosphere.”

Many in Seoul and Washington will want to know if, the rhetoric and smiling images notwithstanding, there’s any possibility Kim will negotiate over the North’s breakneck pursuit of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can viably target the U.S. mainland.

The North has repeatedly and bluntly declared it will not give up its nuclear bombs. It also hates the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that were postponed because of the Olympics but will likely happen later this spring. And achieving its nuclear aims rests on the North resuming tests of missiles and bombs that set the region on edge.

But there was nothing about the Koreas’ very real differences in the North Korean report. Kim was said to have offered his views on “activating the versatile dialogue, contact, cooperation and exchange” between the countries

He was also said to have given “important instruction to the relevant field to rapidly take practical steps for” a summit with South Korean President Moon, which the North proposed last month.

Moon, a liberal who is keen to engage the North, likely wants to visit Pyongyang. But he must first broker better ties between North Korea and Washington, Seoul’s top ally and its military protector.

In the meantime, Moon sent his national security director, Chung Eui-yong, to head the 10-member South Korean delegation that was sent to Pyongyang. Chung’s trip is the first known high-level visit by South Korean officials to the North in about a decade.

The South Korean delegates have another meeting with North Korean officials on Tuesday before returning home, but it’s unclear if Kim will be there.

Kim was said to have expressed at the dinner his “firm will to vigorously advance the north-south relations and write a new history of national reunification by the concerted efforts of our nation to be proud of in the world.”

There is speculation that better inter-Korean ties could pave the way for Washington and Pyongyang to talk about the North’s nuclear weapons. The United States, however, has made clear that it doesn’t want empty talks and that all options, including military measures, are on the table.

Previous warming ties between the Koreas have come to nothing amid North Korea’s repeated weapons tests and the North’s claims that the annual U.S.-South Korean war games are a rehearsal for an invasion.

Before leaving for Pyongyang, Chung said he would relay Moon’s hopes for North Korean nuclear disarmament and a permanent peace on the peninsula.

Chung’s delegation includes intelligence chief Suh Hoon and Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung. The South Korean presidential Blue House said the high-profile delegation is meant to reciprocate the Olympic trip by Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, who became the first member of the North’s ruling family to come to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kim Yo Jong, who also attended Monday’s dinner, and other senior North Korean officials met with Moon during the Olympics, conveyed Kim Jong Un’s invitation to visit Pyongyang and expressed their willingness to hold talks with the United States.

After the Pyongyang trip, Chung’s delegation is scheduled to fly to the United States to brief officials about the outcome of the talks with North Korean officials.

President Donald Trump has said talks with North Korea will happen only “under the right conditions.”

If Moon accepts Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, it would be the third inter-Korean summit talks. The past two summits, one in 2000 and the other in 2007, were held between Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il, and two liberal South Korean presidents. They resulted in a series of cooperative projects between the Koreas that were scuttled during subsequent conservative administrations in the South.

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Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

March 6, 2018