In a surprising development, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un has signaled that he is willing to enter into negotiations with United States about giving up his country’s nuclear and ballistic missile program. He also expressed willingness to suspend those missile tests while the dialogue is underway. The overture was made to South Korean negotiators who were in Pyongyang this week for a historic visit.
The head of South Korea’s security services Chung Eui-yong said that the North is willing to enter with the United States into an “open-ended dialogue to discuss the issue of denuclearization and to normalize relations with North Korea.” The country added, according to Chung, that it had no need for nuclear weapons if “the military threat to North Korea is resolved.”
It is a startling development in an area of the world where open war was being discussed, and planned for, as recently as months ago.
There has been a marked thaw in relations between North and South Korea in recent weeks, though, that have a been a far cry from the missile tests and tough rhetoric that brought the peninsula to the brink of open war last year.
Kim Jong Un began the year calling for a “melting” of frozen North-South relations and followed that up quickly with the sending of a North Korean athletic delegation to the South Korean Olympic Winter Games last month. Athletes from the two nations marched in the opening ceremony under a unified flag, and also fielded a joint women’s field hockey team.
Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister and head of the North’s propaganda department, extended an invitation to South Korean President Moon Jae-in to visit the North last month. The younger Kim was in South Korea to head the North Korea’s Olympic delegation.
Vice President Mike Pence, who was also in PyeongChang heading the U.S. delegation, had a secret meeting set up with the North Koreans during his trip, but after Pence took publicized steps that the North Korean’s found objectionable, the North Koreans cancelled the meeting. According to Pence’s office, the moves were carefully orchestrated to make Pence look like a warrior against North Korea’s propaganda.
The U.S. had said repeatedly that they are open to dialogue with the North, but abandonment of their nuclear missile program is a prerequisite.
The North Koreans had called that condition “preposterous” as recently as this week.
“[The U.S.]… insists that it will have dialogue only for making the DPRK abandon nuclear weapons and persist in ‘maximum pressure’ until complete denuclearization is realized. This is really more than ridiculous,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry several days ago read.
Then came the announcement from the North that they were ready to talk.
A high-ranking delegation from South Korea visited North Korea Monday and met with the country’s leader Kim Jong Un. The 10-member delegation was attempting to lay the groundwork for talks, which would include the United States, on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
The talks also suggested that plans were being laid for a summit between Moon and Kim.
The overture from Kim was greeted cautiously but with optimism in the United States. Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a statement, “While I have few illusions about the regime in Pyongyang given their long track record of deceitful negotiations, I hope that President Trump will be strategic enough to utilize this current opening by fully engaging the United States in clear-eyed and tough-minded constructive diplomacy.”
A request for comment for committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker was not immediately returned.
President Trump also expressed his belief that the North was sincere in its efforts and expressed willingness for the U.S. to match those efforts.
“Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!” the President wrote on Twitter.