North KoreA demAnds ConCessions from U.S.
NORTH KOREA OFFERS CONDITIONAL NUCLEAR PLEDGE
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered Wednesday to permanently dismantle the country’s main nuclear site, but only if the United States makes concessions first.
President Donald Trump called the developments encouraging but made no new commitments.
Leaving the White House on Wednesday, Trump said “we’re making tremendous progress with respect to North Korea” and took credit for changing a dynamic under which he said it once seemed “inevitable” that the United States would go to war with the country.
Now he and Kim have a cordial relationship that included a “tremendous letter” from the North Korean leader this week, Trump said.
“It’s very much calmed down,” he said. “We’re talking. It’s very calm. He’s calm. I’m calm.”
Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have been meeting in Pyongyang in an attempt to push forward their peace process. Standing side by side after their second day of talks, they declared that they had made a major step toward an “era of peace and prosperity” on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim pledged to visit the South Korean capital, Seoul, in what would be a first for a North Korean leader. He also promised to dismantle a missile enginetest facility and a missile launchpad that have been essential to North Korea’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and invite outside experts to watch.
He also “expressed the will to continue taking further steps like permanent dismantlement” of the country’s main Yongbyon nuclear facility, but only if the United States takes “corresponding steps” based on Trump’s agreement with Kim at their June summit.
Later, Moon, who has pursued engagement with the North, made history by addressing an audience of 150,000 people at a performance of the “mass games,” North Korea’s synchronized gymnastics and dance show.
“We have lived together for 5,000 years and been separated for 70 years, “he told the audience in the May Day Stadium. “We must live together as one people.”
The talks were supposed to enhance cooperation between the two Koreas, as well as pave the way for a second summit between Kim and Trump this year.
Experts said it was far from clear that Kim had made concessions that would make a summit an attractive proposition for the U.S. administration. His latest offer says little about what he will do with his existing nuclear arsenal.
Kim’s ultimate goal, analysts told The New York Times, is to make the Trump administration complacent enough about the recent détente to ease sanctions in return for a mere freeze — not the dismantlement — of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.
“No matter how hard I look, I can find no real progress in denuclearization in today’s announcements,” said Cheon Seong-whun, an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said North Korea made similar offers during previous rounds of negotiations, but the steps it ultimately took — demolishing a cooling tower at Yongbyon in 2008 for example — were easily reversed.
But Trump himself reacted positively, calling the news “very exciting” on Twitter.
“We had very good news from North Korea, South Korea. They met, and we had some great responses,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday morning.
“A lot of tremendous things. But very importantly, no missile testing, no nuclear testing,” Trump said.
He noted with apparent approval that the latest interKorean summit included a proposal for a potential joint North Korean-South Korean bid for the Olympic Games, adding, “We have a lot of very good things going.”