Key Kim aide arrives in US to save talks
High-level official set to meet Pompeo
NEW YORK: A senior North Korean official and the top US diplomat had dinner in New York as President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un try to salvage prospects for a high-stakes nuclear summit. It’s the highest-level official North Korean visit to the United States in 18 years.
Kim Yong-chol, the former military intelligence chief and one of the North Korean leader’s closest aides, arrived on Wednesday on a flight from Beijing.
During his unusual visit, Mr Kim had dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who travelled from Washington to see him. The two planned a “day full of meetings’’ yesterday, the White House said. Their talks were aimed at determining whether a meeting between Mr Trump and Kim Jong-un, originally scheduled for June 12 but later cancelled by Mr Trump, can be restored, US officials said.
The talks come as preparations for the highly anticipated summit in Singapore were barreling forward on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, despite lingering uncertainty about whether it will really occur, and when. As Mr Kim and Mr Pompeo were meeting in New York, other US teams were meeting with North Korean officials in Singapore and in the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarised Zone.
“If it happens, we’ll certainly be ready,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the Singapore summit. Regarding the date for the meeting, she added, “We’re going to continue to shoot for June 12th.’’
North Korea’s flurry of diplomatic activity following a torrid run in nuclear weapons and missile tests in 2017 suggests that Kim Jong-un is eager for sanctions relief to build his economy and the international legitimacy the summit with Mr Trump would provide. But there are lingering doubts on whether he will ever fully relinquish his nuclear arsenal, which he may see as his only guarantee of survival in a region surrounded by enemies.
Mr Trump announced that Kim Yongchol was coming to New York for talks with Mr Pompeo in a tweet on Tuesday in which he said he had a “great team’’ working on the summit. That was a shift from last week, when he announced in an open letter to Kim Jong-un that he had decided to “terminate” the summit following a provocative statement from the North.
Mr Pompeo, Mr Trump’s former CIA chief, has travelled to Pyongyang twice in recent weeks for meetings with Kim Jongun, and has said there is a “shared understanding’’ between the two sides about what they hope to achieve in talks. South Korean media speculated that Mr Pompeo could make a third trip to Pyongyang and that Kim Yong-chol was carrying a personal letter from Kim Jong-un and might push to travel to Washington to meet with Mr Trump.
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York is its sole diplomatic presence in the United States. That suggests Yong-chol might have chosen to first go to New York because it would make it easier for him to communicate with officials in Pyongyang. North Korea and the United States are still technically at war and have no diplomatic ties because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Mr Trump views a summit as a legacy-defining opportunity to make the nuclear deal that has evaded others, but he pledged to walk away from the meeting if he believed the North wasn’t serious about discussing dismantling its nuclear programme. After the North’s combative statements, there was debate inside the Trump administration about whether it marked a real turn to belligerence or a feint to see how far Kim Jong-un could push the US in the lead-up to the talks. Mr Trump had mused that Mr Kim’s “attitude” had changed after the North Korean leader’s surprise visit to China two weeks ago, suggesting China was pushing Mr Kim away from the table. Mr Trump’s letter, the aides said, was designed to pressure the North
on the international stage for appearing to have cold feet.
White House officials maintain that Mr Trump was hopeful the North was merely negotiating but that he was prepared for the letter to mark the end of the two-month flirtation. Instead, the officials said, it brought both sides to the table with increasing seriousness, as they work through myriad logistical and policy decisions to keep June 12 a viable option for the summit.
Kim Yong-chol is a vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee. The last official of his stature to visit the United States was Jo Myong-rok, the late first vice chairman of the National Defence Commission, who visited Washington in 2000, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.