U.S. envoy arrives in N. Korea to prepare Trump-Kim summit
SEOUL, South Korea — A senior American negotiator arrived in North Korea on Wednesday to sort out crucial details for a nuclear summit meeting in Vietnam between President Donald Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, with only three weeks to go before the talks take place.
Stephen Biegun, the Trump administration’s special representative for North Korea, arrived in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, around the time that Mr. Trump announced in his State of the Union address that he and Mr. Kim would meet for a second time on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam. Mr. Biegun’s trip had been announced in advance.
When Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump first met in Singapore in June, they agreed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and to build “new” relations between their countries. But since then, talks have stalled over how to carry out that vaguely worded agreement.
Mr. Trump now wants “significant and verifiable progress on denuclearization, actions that are bold and real,” Mr. Biegun said last week in a speech at Stanford University. But American intelligence agencies recently cautioned that the North was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability.”
During his Pyongyang visit, Mr. Biegun plans to pursue “concrete plans to advance all of the elements of the Singapore joint statement,” he said last week. He said the working-level talks in Pyongyang would be aimed at finding concessions that each side could accept, as well as “a road map of negotiations and declarations going forward, and a shared understanding of the desired outcomes of our joint efforts.”
Mr. Biegun’s trip to negotiate such important unresolved issues, just weeks before the talks, reflects the topdown diplomacy that Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim appear to prefer. The American envoy had his first meeting with Kim Hyok Chol, his newly appointed North Korean counterpart, only three weeks ago in Washington.
Unlike their predecessors, Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un — after a series of vitriolic exchanges during the American president’s first year in office — have personally driven their countries’ diplomatic engagement, exchanging letters and flattering remarks. Mr. Trump has boasted of his “fantastic chemistry” with Mr. Kim, even saying that the two “fell in love,” although he acknowledged in his State of the Union address that “much work remains to be done.”
On Tuesday night, Mr. Trump also noted the return of several American citizens who had been imprisoned by the North Korean regime and Pyongyang’s suspension of nuclear and missile tests.
“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” Mr. Trump said.
“That was real eyeroller,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told CNN Wednesday. He criticized Mr. Trump’s foreign policy as engaged in “patting dictators on the back.”
Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, called the president’s rhetoric about preventing a war “somewhat exaggerated” but acknowledged Mr. Trump’s role in the detente with North Korea.
“The possibility of North Korea waging an actual war had been low even before Trump took office,” he said. “Still, the level of provocation from North Korea had been constantly elevating with nuclear tests and missile launches until last year. It is worth noting that Trump’s decision to talk directly to Kim Jong Un has marked a dramatic turn in North Korea’s attitude.”