The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. sends its summit team to North Korea
Sides focus on substance of any talks between Trump, Kim Jong Un.
SEOUL — A team of U.S. officials crossed into North Korea on Sunday for talks to prepare for a summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, as both sides press ahead with arrangements despite the question marks hanging over the meeting.
Sung Kim, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and former nuclear negotiator with the North, has been called in from his posting as envoy to the Philippines to lead the preparations, according to a person familiar with the arrangements.
He crossed the line that separates the two Koreas to meet with Choe Son Hui, the North Korean vice foreign minister, who said last
week that Pyongyang was “reconsidering” the talks. Kim and Choe know each other well — both were part of the delegations that negotiated the 2005 denuclearization agreement through the six-party framework. Kim is also joined by Allison Hooker, the Korea specialist on the National Security Council, and an official from the Defense Department. Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and one of the officials who accompanied Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang earlier this month, also is in Seoul at the moment. However, it could not be immediately confirmed whether he was the Pentagon official involved in Sunday’s talks. The meetings are expected to continue today and Tuesday at Tongilgak, or “Unification House,” the building in the northern part of the DMZ where Kim Jong Un met South Korean President Moon Jae-in Saturday for impromptu talks aimed at salvaging the summit, scheduled to be held in Singapore. The two delegations are focused on the substance of any summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un: the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. After Saturday’s surprise inter-Korean talks, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Kim was still committed to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. But Moon declined to define “complete denuclearization,” suggesting that there are still fundamental gaps on the key issue bedeviling preparations. The South Korean president, who is playing something of a mediator role in the talks, was optimistic after his meeting this weekend, his second in a month with Kim Jong Un. “We two leaders agreed the June 12 North Korea-U.S. summit must be successfully held,” he said. In Washington, lawmakers and former U.S. intelligence officials expressed general support Sunday for proceeding with the summit, but many reacted skeptically to North Korea’s suggestion that it is open to discussing denuclearization. “They’re playing a game,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” show. “Kim Jong Un — these nuclear weapons are something he’s psychologically attached to. They are what give him his prestige and importance. ... I’d love to see them denuclearize. I just I’m not very optimistic about that.” James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence and a one-time senior intelligence officer for U.S. forces in South Korea, said he worried Trump may be opening himself to demands the United States scale back its own strategic Pacific forces. “When we say ‘denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,’ this could be a twoway street,” Clapper said, also on “Face the Nation.” Clapper suggested that a worthy goal for the summit might be to establish a “regular conduit for communication” between the two countries, perhaps including the opening of diplomatic interest sections in both capitals. “This is not a reward for bad behavior at all,” Clapper said. “It’s mutually reciprocal, and would give us that presence there, more insight and more understanding.” From North Korea’s point of view, he said, a U.S. presence in the country might give Pyongyang a “sense of security” against a possible U.S. attack. But Michael Hayden, the CIA director during the George W. Bush administration, said he worried Trump might be at a disadvantage in any a face-toface negotiation with Kim Jong Un. While the North Korean side will likely be fully prepared for the summit, “I don’t know the pres- ident has done the kind of homework that would allow him to do this,” Hayden said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Therein lies the real danger: It’s what will happen at this meeting,” Hayden said. “These folks are not going to get rid of all of their nuclear weapons, and if President Trump’s brand ... going into this meeting demands something like that, this is going to end up in a very bad place.” Given all the ups and downs with the summit, many analysts were relieved to hear that Kim Sung had been enlisted to help. “This is a great step,” said Vipin Narang, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at MIT, noting that the summit preparation was best handled by experts behind the scenes rather than in public forums like Twitter. “This is how progress is made, and the best chance to have a summit, and one that yields meaningful outcomes,” Narang said. Sung Kim, who was born in South Korea, was a key diplomat in the 2005 six-party talks. He served as ambassador to South Korea from 2011 to 2014, then became special representative for North Korea Policy. His North Korean counterpart, Choe, also has years of experience on these issues and is well connected within the North Korean hierarchy. She has also served as a nuclear negotiator and led the U.S. affairs division in the North Korean Foreign Ministry until being promoted to vice foreign minister this year. The daughter of a former premier, she is also thought to have direct access to Kim Jong Un. Most analysts still think it is extremely unlikely North Korea will surrender its nuclear weapons. The United States has been pushing for “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement” — a high bar that would require North Korea to relinquish its entire nuclear program and allow international inspectors to verify this.