N. Korea presses demand for end of war
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea pressed its demand Friday that the United States agree to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, as South Korea’s leader indicated that the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was preparing for his fourth visit to the North.
Pompeo, the point man in President Donald Trump’s efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, has been struggling to follow up on the agreement reached between Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, when they met in Singapore in June in the first summit between their nations.
In Singapore, Kim committed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
But the summit agreement lacked details on how to achieve that goal, and Pompeo and his team of negotiators has struggled since then to win concrete action on this front from their North Korean counterparts.
When he met with representatives of political parties in Seoul on Thursday, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said that negotiations between the United States and North Korea have recently gained “speed,” with Pompeo planning to visit North Korea again, according to Yun So-ha, an opposition leader, who briefed reporters on the meeting.
On Thursday, Pompeo said his team was “continuing to make progress” with the North Koreans, and said he hoped that “we can make a big step here before too long.”
The State Department has yet to announce whether and when Pompeo planned to visit North Korea again. But South Korean officials have said that Moon has scheduled his own visit to Pyongyang in September.
The latest hitch in negotiations has been over North Korea’s demand that the United States join the two Koreas in declaring an end to the Korean War.
U.S. officials fear that North Korea may be seeking such a declaration to undermine the rationale for the U.S. military presence in South Korea without getting any commitment by Pyongyang to relinquish its nuclear weapons. The Americans insist that North Korea take meaningful steps toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program before Washington makes any such concessions.
North Korea insists that it will move toward the complete denuclearization only in phases and will do so only if Washington matches them with corresponding measures to improve ties and provide security guarantees for the North.