US, ROK and Japan hold talks on summit meetings
High-level representatives from the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan met over the weekend, with the tensions on the Korean Peninsula at the heart of their discussions.
The ROK’s National Security Office chief Chung Euiyong, US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Japan’s National Security Adviser Yachi Shotaro held the talks in San Francisco.
Also on the agenda were the summit meetings between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea top leader Kim Jong-un and ROK President Moon Jae-in, set to be held in late April, and the possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim, the ROK’s Blue House said on Monday.
The security advisers from the three countries agreed to maintain close cooperation in the next several weeks, stressing that they shared a view to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”, Reuters reported.
Chung, who headed a highlevel delegation to Pyongyang in March and met Kim during his trip, said the DPRK told his delegation it won’t need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against it are removed and it receives a credible security guarantee.
ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha also said Kim had “given his word” that he was committed to denuclearization during her appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation that aired on Sunday.
“He’s given his word. But the significance of his word is — is quite — quite weighty in the sense that this is the first time that the words came directly from the North Korean supreme leader himself, and that has never been done before,” she said.
Military drills
Li Chengri, an expert at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the DPRK has long maintained such a stance, saying it may not abandon its nuclear weapons unless the US pulls its troops from the ROK and Japan and stops regular military drills with the ROK that it views as an invasion rehearsal.
Li said the intention of the weekend meeting is to stress the importance of their trilateral alliances and continuing the maximum pressure campaign against Pyongyang.
Li added that the US may also try to prevent DPRK and ROK relations becoming “too intimate”, thus the ROK side may loosen its attitudes on sanctions against the DPRK.
The US tried to advance the US-Japan-ROK military cooperation mechanism which aimed not only at the Korean Peninsula but also at strengthening its military deployment to Asia, Li added.
On Monday, ROK’s Yonhap News Agency reported that ROK defense sources said Washington and Seoul will soon reveal the schedule of their combined military drills, quoting the source as saying: “The two sides plan to announce the schedule of the joint training, postponed due to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, on Tuesday.”
The DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency earlier said in an editorial that the US-ROK drills will harm reconciliation efforts and that the DPRK will “counter the US” if the joint military exercises continue.