Chung Eui-yong (South Korea) - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

South Korea to offer economic and political sweeteners if North Korea allows in nuclear inspectors

Michael Armstrong — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:31:48 +0000

Other demands to be made by Seoul at Korean leaders summit include freeze on Pyongyang’s missile programme, says South Korean government security adviser.

South Korea will demand the North freezes its missile programme, disclose its nuclear capacity and allow in nuclear inspectors in exchange for economic and political concessions from Seoul, a senior South Korean national security adviser said ahead of a summit between the two nations’ leaders.

Moon Chung-in, a special adviser on foreign affairs and national security in Seoul, said he expected significant outcomes from the talks between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27, although it was highly unlikely US troops in the South would be withdrawn as part of any deal.

President Moon may also submit a formal declaration of peace with North Korea at the UN General Assembly in September if the two leaders can strike an agreement, the adviser told the South China Morning Post.

The Korean war ended in 1953 after an armistice was signed, but no formal peace agreement was made.

“As long as Pyongyang’s denuclearisation commitment is verifiable, incentives may be provided in various forms including military, political and diplomatic assurances to the regime”, the adviser Moon said.

CIA chief met Kim Jong-un during secret visit to North Korea

The United States, South Korea’s main military ally, may also provide incentives, he added.

“If North Korea is willing to denuclearise in a complete and a verifiable way, then the incentives by the US, as well as other countries in the world, will be quite hefty,” said Moon.

These could include North Korea’s long demands for an easing of international sanctions, removing it from a list of sponsors of international terrorism and suspending the use of some US strategic weapons, he said.

“If North Korea is really committed to denuclearisation, those kinds incentives won’t face any kinds of obstacles,” Moon said.

Kim should know that he can’t have nuclear weapons and economic development at the same time ~MOON CHUNG-IN, SOUTH KOREAN SECURITY ADVISER

Hopes of an end to the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula have risen in recent months after North and South Korea’s leaders agreed to talks. Kim Jong-un is also to meet with US President Donald Trump.

Kim made an unexpected trip to Beijing last month and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump, meanwhile, said on Tuesday the US and North Korea were holding direct talks at “extremely high levels” in preparation for his summit with Kim. CIA director Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea last week to meet with Kim.

Trump gives his ‘blessing’ as Koreas ‘plan to end their war’

Security adviser Moon said he was surprised by the speed in developments, adding that Kim had become “very proactive” in pursuing talks with South Korea.

Moon suggested that the North Korean leader realised he had to pay more attention to pursuing pressing economic reforms to improve the livelihood of his people in the diplomatically isolated state.

“Kim should know that he can’t have nuclear weapons and economic development at the same time. Therefore, unless he makes fundamental concessions in the area of nuclear issues, he cannot achieve economic development,” Moon said.

Kim has so far not demanded the withdrawal of US troops in South Korea in his recent meetings with South Korean officials, including talks held last month with Seoul’s special envoy Chung Eui-yong, according to Moon. Troop withdrawals have previously been raised as a precondition for denuclearization by Pyongyang.

Moon also said the deployment of the US-developed missile shield system may not be needed in South Korea if the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons was achieved through negotiation.

Plans to use the system triggered a furious response from Beijing, which regards the technology as a threat to national security.

“If there is some sort of peace agreement through a declaration of an end to the Korean war, then China will get involved in the process of building peace in the Korean peninsula because China is a legal party to the armistice agreement,” said Moon.

Trump says US has had ‘extremely high-level’ talks with North Korea

However, he was sceptical of the need for a formal peace treaty, noting that the two Koreas already have a myriad of agreements to ensure peace in the region.

“We can make peace with existing agreements and declarations without drawing up a separate formal peace treaty,” he said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Seoul to offer North sweeteners to freeze nuke plans

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Bolton meets S Korean, Japanese national security advisers

Matthew Pennington — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 05:57:53 +0000

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser held talks Thursday with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, as the U.S. gears up for an unprecedented summit with North Korea.

Bolton met with Chung Eui-yong, the South Korean official who last month conveyed Kim’s offer to Trump to talk about “denuclearization” and halt nuclear and missile tests. Chung was then given the unexpected duty of announcing to journalists in the White House driveway Trump’s surprise agreement to hold a meeting.

South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, is due to hold his own summit with Kim on April 27.

Bolton also held talks with Japan’s Shotaro Yachi, whose prime minister, Shinzo Abe, will meet Trump at his Florida resort on Tuesday.

Abe has fostered personal ties with Trump and has been a strong supporter of the U.S.-led campaign of sanctions against North Korea to compel it to negotiate on its nuclear program after a long hiatus in talks.

During his second trip to Mar-a-Lago, Abe will be seeking reassurance that Japan’s interests won’t be overlooked at the Trump-Kim summit.

The Japanese leader has said he’s worried that North Korean security threats to Japan, including short- and medium-range missiles, may not be discussed, and that Trump will focus on intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten America.

The differing perspectives of the allies, which both host U.S. forces but have sharp historic differences, could complicate Washington’s management of policy on North Korea.

A spokesman at the National Security Council said Chung and Yachi are the first national security advisers to meet with Bolton since he took office this week.

Trump on Thursday praised the role of China, currently in a standoff on trade tariffs with the U.S., in pressuring North Korea. He predicted his meeting with Kim would be “terrific.”

“I think we’re going with a lot of respect, and we’ll see what happens. So we’ve come a long way. But China has really helped us at the border, and we appreciate it,” Trump said at a meeting with governors and senators on trade and agriculture at the White House.

Source: https://japantoday.com/category/politics/bolton-meets-with-skorea-japan-national-security-advisers

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South Korean President Moon’s Gamble for Peace With North Korea Has Paid Off

Tim Shorrock — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 06:00:39 +0000

But the diplomatic process will be managed by US and Korean spy agencies.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is greeted by his supporters in Goyang, May 4, 2017. (AP Photo / Lee Jin-man)

On May 7, 2017, two days before Moon Jae-in’s historic election as South Korea’s president, I interviewed the former human-rights lawyer after he spoke to a campaign rally in Gwangju, the industrial city in Korea’s southwest famous for its 1980 citizens’ uprising against a US-backed military government.

Moon had just pledged to 2,000 cheering supporters gathered in front of the city’s high-speed rail station to “raise my voice loudly” to ensure that Seoul was in the lead in any dealings with North Korea. This was a reference to President Donald Trump, whose escalating rhetoric against North Korea was frightening Korean voters and had raised tensions in Asia to a boiling point.

As we sat down to talk in the stationmaster’s office, I asked Moon about the pundits and officials in Washington who were complaining about his pledge to continue the “Sunshine Policy” of his progressive predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Was Moon concerned about predictions that his laser focus on engagement and dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would create fissures with the Trump administration and shake up the US-South Korean alliance?

His answer was an emphatic no. “I don’t agree,” Moon said, his face breaking into a wide smile. “To solve the North Korea nuclear problem is in both our common interests. If South Korea takes an active role, that would be helpful to the United States and would relieve the US burden.” Trump, he said, “would also sympathize with my idea and understand me on this issue.”

What I witnessed in that interview was the beginning of Moon’s months-long effort to seize control over the Korea crisis and turn it into a peace process that would ensure that the Korean people were protected from the outbreak of a second destructive war. Today, it’s clear that his gamble has paid off—big time—with one of the biggest political reversals in the history of US foreign policy: Trump’s momentous decision—after months of hair-raising confrontation—to meet face to face with the leader of North Korea, an unprecedented step for a sitting US president.

Moon’s words that day last spring were “prophetic and right on the mark, and he’s done exactly what he said,” says Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA analyst who was a US envoy for the “Six-Party Talks” during the Bush administration. Looking back, in an interview with The Nation, at the events that led up to Trump’s decision to meet with Kim, DeTrani said that “Moon Jae-in has not only taken the lead, he’s taken the lead and run with it in a very impressive way. He has handled this brilliantly.”

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, of course, claim that Moon’s success is due to the US “maximum pressure” campaign of military threats and sanctions. But that alone would not have brought Kim to the table, says Suzanne DiMaggio, a skilled negotiator with the New America Foundation who has been meeting with North Korean diplomats regularly in what’s called the “Track II” process. “The other major factor is the diplomatic heavy lifting and finessing done by President Moon and his colleagues to get us to this point,” she said.

The contours of Moon’s triumph became clear on March 8, when Chung Eui-yong, his national security adviser, announced on live television at the White House that Trump had accepted an invitation—conveyed by North Korea through Moon’s representatives during two days of meetings in Pyongyang—to meet with Kim sometime in May.

As recounted by Chung to the gathered reporters, Kim Jong-un told South Korea that “he is committed to denuclearization. He pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests. He understands that the routine joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue. And he expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.” Both South and North Korea were surprised by how quickly Trump accepted the invitation, according to people who have talked to both governments.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha affirmed Kim’s promises during a visit to Washington this week. Kim Jong-un “has given his word” on discussing denuclearization, she told Face the Nation last Sunday. “This is the first time that the words came directly from the North Korean supreme leader himself, and that has never been done before.”

In the end, the deal is very much along the lines of the “freeze for freeze” proposals—outlined in these pages last fall—in which the North would establish the atmosphere for talks by suspending its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a moratorium or scaling down of the US-South Korea military exercises that Kim Jong-un had denounced as a threat to North Korea’s sovereignty and had used to justify his nuclear program.

The Trump administration, however, rejects any notion that it has accepted such a swap. Just after the summit was announced, CIA director Mike Pompeo said that Washington had made no concessions to get the meeting, pointing to the fact Kim has “allowed us to continue our exercises on the peninsula, something that’s been fought over for decades.”

That’s true, as Kim’s guarantees confirmed. But South Korean officials have been saying for weeks that the exercises will be scaled down this year and won’t include most of the strategic weapons deployed in the past, such as B-1B bombers or nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his South Korean counterpart, Song Young-moo, announced that the first exercises, called Foal Eagle, will begin April 1, but they didn’t release any details about timing or how many troops will be mobilized.

Instead, Korean officials, speaking on background in South Korea, confirmed that the exercises will be low-key: According to AP, there are “no immediate plans to bring in American strategic assets.” This is clearly a concession, despite Pompeo’s denial and the strange decisions by US media not to report the Korean caveats (the contrast between US and South Korean coverage of the exercises is striking).

On Wednesday, meanwhile, North Korea finally acknowledged what it called “a sign of change” in US-North Korean relations, attributing it to “the dramatic atmosphere for reconciliation [that] has been created in relations between the north and the south of Korea,” according to official statements quoted in NK News. The US press, in contrast, has moved on from the Trump-Kim summit, with even the usual hawkish voices staying quiet. That’s left the South Korean media to cover the results of the extraordinary process unfolding in Northeast Asia.

There were several turning points in Moon’s quest to place South Korea, as he has said, “in the driver’s seat.” One came last August, when he bluntly warned Trump against embarking on a unilateral military strike against North Korea, which he and most Koreans know would immediately wreak havoc on the south and throughout the peninsula. “No one shall take a military action on the Korean Peninsula without South Korean consent,” he said in an emotional statement.

The other came last December, after North Korea tested its second hydrogen bomb and successfully launched a Hwasong-15 rocket, its most powerful so far, an ICBM capable of hitting targets in the United States. That month, Kim declared that North Korea had completed its “state nuclear force.” He then passed word through his diplomats that this meant that North Korea was ready to stop its testing altogether, even before it had succeeded in fitting a nuclear warhead to a missile capable of re-entry into the atmosphere and hitting a target.

“The interesting thing is, they stopped short of completing an ICBM and a reliable thermo-nuclear warhead,” says Leon Sigal, a former State Department official and editorial writer for The New York Times who wrote a history of the 1994 nuclear crisis called Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea. In the deal they’ve agreed to, he said in an interview, “they’ve given us a suspension of their nuclear and missile programs, which is not trivial because they were on the cusp of having” a reliable nuclear weapon system, he says. “We got something, and they got something.”

Kim’s declaration “was a significant achievement in their eyes,” DiMaggio told me. “Now they can come to the table with maximum negotiating strength, so the timing for engagement now makes complete sense.”

The final step came when the Trump administration dropped its preconditions for talks, which had included a cessation of testing and a prior commitment to denuclearize. That was communicated privately and then publicly shortly before Moon’s Olympic diplomacy, said Sigal, who, like DiMaggio, has been a key player in Track II talks with North Korea. “They were ready [to talk] when we dropped our preconditions,” he said.

The deal for a summit was supposed to be sealed by a meeting in Seoul between Vice President Mike Pence and his advisers with Kim Yo-jong, Kim’s sister, during the Olympics. But Pence’s boorish and arrogant behavior convinced the North to cancel two hours before it was to begin. Later, Ivanka Trump was accompanied in a trip to Seoul by Allison Hooker, the director of Korean affairs at the National Security Council, but a scheduled meeting between Hooker and a North Korean deputy never materialized. “That was a missed opportunity on both fronts,” said Sigal.

After this, of course, came Moon Jae-in’s spectacular diplomacy with Kim Jong-un’s representatives in Seoul, and the agreement in Pyongyang for Moon and Kim to hold the third intra-Korean summit in April at the truce village of Panmunjom, to be followed by the unprecedented summit between Kim and Trump. Moon’s approval rating among South Koreans is now hovering at 74 percent, “thanks to positive views of his handling of relations with North Korea,” the Yonhap News Agency reports.

To be sure, the outcome of any Trump-Kim summit is far from certain and will require an unprecedented system of verification if North Korea does in fact agree to eventually give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a normal, and peaceful, relationship with the United States. “That’s a steep mountain to climb,” former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who led US negotiations with North Korea in the 1990s, told a Washington conference last week.

But DeTrani, who was a nonproliferation expert for the CIA and was involved in verification procedures during the Six-Party Talks, believes such a system is entirely possible if the United States and North Korea can agree that monitors would have access to nuclear facilities, including the scientists and technologists working in them, as well as weapons sites that have not been officially declared. “I really believe that if you could get all those pieces together for North Korea, given what’s going on with overhead reconnaissance capabilities and so on, I would think we would probably be able to do a good job,” he told me.

Last week, President Trump appeared to throw a monkey wrench into the negotiating process when he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had been in charge of the administration’s diplomatic approach to North Korea, and replaced him with the more hawkish Pompeo. On March 11, even before the switch was announced, Pompeo confirmed that Trump “has indicated he’s prepared to go have an initial discussion on this incredibly important topic and we’re preparing for that time.”

But the CIA chief’s assurances were not enough for the media, which reacted to the initial news of a Trump-Kim summit with horror and disbelief. After finally getting used to the idea that Trump was committed and was going, reporters became obsessed about the fact that, a week after Chung’s momentous announcement at the White House, North Korea had yet to respond publicly to the offer.

The “silence,” the Times speculated, citing Jung Park, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution, has “raised suspicions” among experts as to whether Kim “really made the offer.” That meme was soon repeated on MSNBC, where North Korea missile analyst Jeffrey Lewis told news-host Chris Hayes that he was suspicious about South Korea’s assurances because they were made at a “boozy” meeting in Pyongyang between Moon’s representatives and Kim Jong-un.

Sigal, who has extensive contacts on both sides of the DMZ, attributed North Korea’s public silence in part to the closure of the “New York channel” this month when Joseph Yun, the US diplomat who has been leading low-level US talks with Pyongyang through its UN Mission in New York, abruptly resigned from his post. The North Koreans “haven’t confirmed their position because we haven’t sent a clear message to them of our intent through the working-level New York channel or any other official bilateral channel,” Sigal said. Beyond that, “the press has been utterly uninterested in the negotiating side of the story,” he added. “They love the war story.”

DiMaggio, for her part, doubted that President Moon would risk his reputation and presidency on a false promise he had not confirmed with his northern counterparts. “My sense of how the South Koreans are approaching this is they are being quite cautious and disciplined,” she told me. “I don’t think they would relay any messages that didn’t actually happen.”

On the other hand, she was concerned that Pompeo’s elevation to secretary of state could signal that Trump’s impulses will be given full rein as he prepares to meet with Kim, and could put Moon’s carefully planned diplomatic offensive at risk. “It’s clear he’s skeptical of any diplomatic approach,” she said.

“That, combined with his lack of negotiating experience, points to what I would call rough waters ahead. As the nation’s chief diplomat, she added, Pompeo will face a “steep learning curve, especially when you compare him to his counterpart in Pyongyang,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, “who is a very seasoned diplomat and a US expert with years of experience.”

DiMaggio, who was deeply involved as an observer at the US talks with Iran over its nuclear program, said the lack of experience could hurt as the talks proceed. “One concern I have is if the administration would move forward with talks and handle them poorly, and then announce them as a failure. That could potentially open the way to a military action after diplomacy is deemed a failed proposition. That scenario really worries me.”

Meanwhile, convinced of North Korea’s seriousness, the Moon government is quickly setting up the foreign-policy apparatus for negotiations and organizing simultaneous talks on resolving the standoff with China, Japan, and Russia. In addition, North Korea sent Foreign Minister Ri this week to Sweden, which represents US interests in Pyongyang, and a second diplomat to Finland to meet with a group of former US and South Korean officials (Finland’s government said Wednesday the talks were “constructive.”) There was speculation that Ri’s talks in Sweden could lead to North Korea’s release of three Americans still held in prison, but by mid-week that had yet to happen.

Looking back over the past year, Pompeo’s emergence as Trump’s key player in North Korean affairs seems inevitable—in part because he has already been playing that role for months.

In 2017, about a week after Moon was sworn in as president, the CIA set up a Korea Mission Center that integrates officers from across the agency to “bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target” (intelligence contractors like CACI are busy recruiting to fill the spots). Unusually for a CIA center, it has been fairly open in its work, with Pompeo and the top deputies of the center appearing as speakers at public events, including an academic conference in Washington last October. In contrast, Tillerson spoke little in public about Korea, except in brief interviews with the press.

Pompeo also “became more active in the CIA’s Daily Briefs where he’s personally briefing the president,” said DeTrani, the former intelligence officer. “So I think it makes eminent sense that he would be the point person on what is going on with North Korea.” Moreover, when the talks get to a stage where verification of a testing moratorium and other steps is required, US intelligence assets controlled by the CIA and the National Security Agency will be crucial, he said.

I was convinced that Pompeo was in command on January 23, when he delivered a public speech at the American Enterprise Institute and spent most of his time talking—and answering questions—about North Korea. It was one of the most detailed administration speeches yet on Korea and, to a careful listener, signaled that the Trump administration had thoroughly grasped the significance of Kim Jong-un’s confirmation that he had completed development of his nuclear program and would no longer be testing.

“The logical next step [for Kim] would be to develop an arsenal of weapons” that would have “the capacity to deliver from multiple firings of these missiles simultaneously,” Pompeo said. “That’s the very mission set that President Trump has directed the government to figure out a way to make sure it never occurs.” He added: “The president is intent on delivering this solution through diplomatic means. It is the focus.”

In what had to be a carefully controlled leak, last Friday the Times confirmed that Pompeo has been in close contact with North Korea “through a channel that runs between the C.I.A. and its North Korean counterpart, the Reconnaissance General Bureau,” which combines the country’s formidable intelligence and special forces.

Pompeo, the Times said, is also working closely with Suh Hoon, the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), who was in Pyongyang with Chung Eui-yong, the national security adviser. As a deputy NIS director earlier in the century, Suh lent important support to the Sunshine Policy and helped organize, with North Korean intelligence, the previous summits in 2000 and 2007 (Moon was in Pyongyang for the last one, as President Roh’s chief of staff).

Suh’s counterpart and primary host in Pyongyang was Kim Yong-chol, a vice chairman of the Central Committee of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party and the former head of the spy agency who now overseesPyongyang’s relationship with South Korea. He was also Kim Jong-un’s delegate in Pyeongchang for the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and, most significantly, was the official who told Moon that the North was willing to have parallel negotiations with the United States.

“He’s a [Workers’] party guy, and has done some bad things in the past,” says Sigal, referring to Kim Yong-chol. According to the South Korean government, in 2010 Kim Yong-chol masterminded the attack and sinking of a South Korean naval vessel that killed 46 sailors and brought North-South relations to an all-time low (North Korea denied involvement, and some Koreans have raised doubts about Kim Yong-chol’s involvement).

Even so, says Sigal, he is one of the best-informed North Koreans on the United States. “People don’t know he was involved with the military-to-military talks with us and the South Koreans” during the Bush administration, said Sigal. “He has a long history of knowledge about the US.”

Joel Wit, a former US negotiator on the 1994 Agreed Framework, told a Monday press briefing at the US-Korea Institute that the CIA’s channel to North Korean intelligence has existed with “ongoing contacts” since 2009, including visits to North Korea by intelligence officials in 2012 and in 2014 by James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

Kim Yong-chol “has been the main contact in this channel for much of the time,” he said. But Wit, who participates with DiMaggio in the Track II talks with North Korean diplomats, cautioned that intelligence channels are “not ideal” and have “serious drawbacks,” compared with diplomacy. “You can’t just send some intelligence analysts off to meet with North Koreans and think that that’s going to work well,” he warned.

Despite the dominance of the spies, the negotiators past and present I spoke to were all optimistic that Trump could develop a framework for further negotiations, leading down the road to disarmament talks that would allow North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

And while they worried about the short time span before the summit and the lack of preparation on the US side, they said there were plenty of past US-North Korean formulations to rely on as precedents. They include declarations about denuclearization, respect for sovereignty, and economic and political normalization made jointly in 1994 and 2000, and the broader Six-Party declaration in 2005.

Most of all, they argue that Trump has a fundamental interest in testing North Korea’s resolve. “To the extent the North Koreans want a fundamentally new relationship with the United States, they’re prepared to do things,” Sigal said. “And that’s got to be tested. And the only way to test it is, you make offers at the negotiating table, see if they take them, live up to your end of the deal, and see if they live up.”

“All these people who think they know what the North Koreans are going to do,” he concluded with a laugh, “have no clue!”

Tim Shorrock TWITTERTim Shorrock is a Washington, DC–based journalist and the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/south-korean-president-moons-gamble-for-peace-with-north-korea-has-paid-off/

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Seoul to closely cooperate with China, Japan to tackle North Korea issue

Jennie Oh — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 02:16:10 +0000

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon (L) meets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) in Tokyo, Japan 13 March 2018. Suh recently met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and discussed the prospect of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Photo by EPA-EFE/KIM KYUNG-HOON.

March 13 (UPI) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s special envoys visited regional leaders to rally support on tackling North Korea-related issues, following their meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Last week, Moon’s security adviser Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service Director Suh Hoon brokered a breakthrough agreement between Pyongyang and Washington to discuss denuclearization.

Chung headed to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jin Ping on Monday, News 1 reported.

He shared the outcome of his meetings with the North Korean and U.S. leaders and reportedly delivered President Moon’s invitation for Xi to visit South Korea.

Xi reportedly said he actively backs the effort to improve and reconcile relations between the South and North, expressing hope for a successful summit between the two Koreas next month as well as between the North and the United States in May.

The Chinese leader also reiterated Beijing’s stance on supporting and playing an active role in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and resolving the North’s nuclear crisis through dialogue.

He called for stronger communication between the South and China in dealing with major issues.

Meanwhile, Suh held a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, a day after meeting with Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

According to Suh, Abe expressed support for denuclearization talks between the North and the United States, emphasizing that Pyongyang should take “concrete” steps toward dismantling its nuclear program.

He called for continued trilateral cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington in resolving the North’s nuclear issue as well as the regime’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens.

In his meeting with the Japanese foreign minister the day before, the South Korean spy chief reportedly agreed to cooperate in resolving the abduction issue and that upcoming summits with the North must yield concrete steps toward denuclearization, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.

While Suh returns to Seoul, Chung is set to make a two-day trip to Moscow to consult Russian officials.

How Trump caught his White House and the world by surprise

Kevin Liptak-CNN — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 17:52:15 +0000

(CNN)When White House aides arrived at work Thursday, they were prepared for a market-shaking event that would prompt jitters among US allies and cause heartburn among establishment thinkers, even Republicans.

They weren’t prepared for two such events.

President Donald Trump sent shock waves across the globe when he accepted an invitation from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for talks. No sitting US president has ever met with a leader from North Korea. The move represents the largest gamble to date for two truculent leaders who have engaged in a harrowing nuclear stare-down.

It also caught presidential advisers — who had been hurriedly finalizing details on steel tariffs while also attempting to stave off unsavory questions about a porn actress — off-guard.

Trump hadn’t initially been scheduled to meet with a delegation of South Korea officials in Washington to brief his administration on recent talks with Pyongyang. The group arrived mid-afternoon as the President was convening sessions with representatives of the video game industry and announcing his new tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

Trump accepts offer to meet Kim Jong Un

But after speaking with the US national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, the group, led by McMaster’s South Korean counterpart, Chung Eui-yong, convened in the Oval Office with Trump. The gathering included three US generals — McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly. It was there, sitting on the gold brocade sofas, that Trump fielded the striking offer from North Korea and readily agreed.

For Trump, the offer and his unprecedented plans to meet the North Korean leader were too great to keep quiet. Trump left the Oval Office intending to return to his private residence. But he made a detour, navigating the corridors of the West Wing toward the press briefing room, a venue he’d yet to speak from during his year-and-a-month as President.

Peeking around a half-opened pocket door, Trump caught the eye of a small handful of reporters and drew them closer to him. First, he asked to speak off the record, but with an ounce of prodding agreed to go on the record, as long as his remarks remained off camera.

“South Korea’s going to be making a major statement at about 7 o’clock,” Trump said ceremoniously. Vice President Mike Pence stood silently behind him.

“About what?” a puzzled reporter asked.

“The big subject,” Trump replied, his scowl turning into a grin.

Thursday, in fact, contained two big subjects at the White House for the government in Seoul: the developments on North Korea and the tariffs on steel, which South Korea exports by millions of tons per year.

Trump clarified.

“North Korea,” he said, before ducking back into West Wing.

The brief appearance, which lasted 29 seconds, came amid a sordid swirl of reports about his alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels and a thunderstorm of criticism over his beloved steel tariffs.

It sent reporters and White House officials scrambling. McMaster huddled with press secretary Sarah Sanders in her office to sort out the unusual logistics of a foreign government delivering an announcement from the White House.

It was determined that having Chung deliver his news from the briefing room podium would break protocol and prove confusing. Instead, they sent him outdoors to the set of microphones on permanent standby in the White House driveway.

“President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,” Chung said.

The decision, which aides said came about quickly in the Oval Office, represents a massive challenge for the President. His aides insist he is up for it.

“President Trump has made his reputation on making deals,” one official said. “President Trump was elected in part because he is willing to do — take approaches very, very different from past approaches and past presidents. That couldn’t be better exemplified in his North Korea policy.”

Sanders later wrote in a statement that the “place and time” of the meeting were still to be determined. The security and advance work would prove daunting for an experienced White House, let alone an administration still working to find its footing amid persistent chaos and low morale.

The North Korea decision wasn’t immune from the appearance of disarray. Speaking in Ethiopia hours before Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said direct talks between the US and North Korea were still in the distant future.

“We’re a long way from negotiations. We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it,” Tillerson said. “I don’t know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations.”

Trump spoke with his top diplomat before his announcement, a senior State Department official said. Both men spoke with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who has expressed deep misgivings about opening talks with North Korea.

Ultimately, the President himself may have been the least surprised at Thursday’s developments. He has long remained open to talks with Kim, despite the view of top national security officials that too much is unknown about North Korea’s intentions in proposing them.

Trump himself offered the best preview of his move during last Saturday’s Gridiron dinner in Washington, a white tie affair for journalists, where few in attendance expected they’d be covering news of an upcoming US-North Korea summit in a matter of days.

“I won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un. I just won’t,” the President said. “As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that’s his problem, not mine.”

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Jeff Zeleny, Kaitlan Collins and Jim Acosta contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/08/politics/north-korea-us-trump-white-house-surprise/index.html

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Trump agrees to meet Kim Jong Un by May, South Korea says

Fox Business — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 11:05:31 +0000

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President Trump To Meet With Kim Jong Un, White House Says

Scott Horsley, Elise Hu — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 11:04:37 +0000

President Trump has agreed to a face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “at a place and time to be determined,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Thursday.

The announcement came in response to a stunning invitation from Kim, relayed by South Korea’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, who briefed Trump and other U.S. officials on Chung’s recent meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

Any meeting between these two leaders would be historic. The U.S. has no diplomatic ties with North Korea, the countries are adversaries dating to the Korean War and repeatedly traded heated insults last year, including Trump’s remarks at the United Nations, in which he vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. was threatened.

Following North Korea’s successful tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles last year, the international community has steadily increased pressure on North Korea in hopes of curbing its outlaw nuclear program.

“I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” Chung said. “I expressed [South Korean] President Moon Jae-in’s personal gratitude for President Trump’s leadership.”

Chung said that during his meeting with Kim, the North Korean leader expressed his commitment to denuclearization as well as his “eagerness to meet with Trump as soon as possible.” Kim also agreed to refrain from conducting further nuclear or missile tests during this period, Chung said.

Trump was guarded earlier this week about whether he would be willing to meet with Kim, but Chung reported no such reservations from the president.

“President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,” Chung said.

A senior administration official confirmed that the meeting is expected within “a couple of months.” The location for such a meeting is yet to be determined. Kim Jong Un is not known to have even stepped foot out of North Korea since taking power in 2011, so the location is a huge question.

Trump himself tweeted, “Great progress is being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached.”

South Korea and other countries are approaching this diplomatic overture with caution. “The Republic of Korea, the United States, and our partners stand together in insisting that we not repeat the mistakes of the past,” Chung said. “The pressure will continue until North Korea matches its words with concrete action.”

Previous U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have met with North Korean leader Kim’s father. Other U.S. presidents have been reluctant to agree to any meeting — or even a phone call — with Kim without firm preconditions in order to deny the Kim regime the validation from a global superpower.

While Chung said South Korea is “optimistic” about continued talks, it will proceed with joint military exercises with the United States. Those exercises had been postponed while South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics.

Chung said Kim “understands that the routine joint military exercises between [South Korea and the U.S.] must continue.”

Now the planning of a potential summit must begin, and without key diplomats in place. Typically before a head-of-state summit, the details of what will be negotiated are hammered out in advance in a series of working level meetings. The Trump administration just lost a key point man on Korean issues at the State Department and has yet to appoint an ambassador to South Korea. North Korea, meanwhile, has a track record of being extremely deft negotiators.

“They’re gonna know the Americans very well, as well as they can,” says John Delury, a North Korea watcher and professor at Yonsei University in Seoul. “So President Trump cannot just waltz into this kind of summit. He’s gonna need all the resources of the U.S. government expertise, from the military, national security advisors, State Department diplomats who have met with North Koreans. So this is really gonna take a dream team to advise the president so that he doesn’t make any mistakes.”

Before any high level U.S.-North Korea meeting will happen, South Korea will be busy planning another major summit — Kim Jong Un has agreed to meet with the South Korean President at the inter-Korean border next month.

Scott Horsley reported from Washington. Elise Hu reported from Seoul. Se Eun Gong contributed to this story.

Source: https://wamu.org/story/18/03/09/president-trump-to-meet-with-kim-jong-un-white-house-says/

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North Korea open to talks with United States, South Korea says

Hakyung Kate Lee and Ben Gittleson - ABC — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 06:57:14 +0000

South Korea’s presidential office said today that North Korea’s delegation to the Olympics agreed that there should be talks between the United States and North Korea.

im Eui-kyeom, a spokesperson for the Blue House, the presidential office, said that just like South Korea, the delegation from Pyongyang believed that U.S.-North Korean relations should improve.

The announcement followed talks today between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and members of North Korea’s delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics closing ceremony.

In response, the White House did not rule out direct talks, saying: “We will see if Pyongyang’s message today, that it is willing to hold talks, represents the first steps along the path to denuclearization. In the meantime, the United States and the world must continue to make clear that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a dead end.”

It said that any dialogue with the North must result in denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and that a “maximum pressure campaign must continue until North Korea denuclearizes.”

Michael Probst/AP Photo

Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee, back right, watches the closing ceremony with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, left, Moon’s wife Kim Jung-sook, and Ivanka Trump, Feb. 25, 2018

A State Department spokesperson told ABC News the United States was “in close contact with the Republic of Korea about our unified response to North Korea,” using the official name for South Korea. “As President Moon stated, ‘The improvement of relations between North and South Korea cannot advance separately from resolving North Korea’s nuclear program.'”

The South said the talks lasted an hour and concluded just a couple hours before the Olympics closing ceremony started in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The North Korean delegation included Kim Yong Chol, the vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee, and Ri Son Kwon, the chairman of North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, according to the Blue House.

Moon was joined by the Blue House national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, and the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, the president’s office said.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he hoped relations between North Korea and South Korea would improve, and the North Korean delegation said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un felt the same way, according to the spokesperson.

The Blue House made the announcement as the closing ceremony was getting underway. The American and North Korean delegations sat seats away from each other during the ceremony but did not appear to interact.

ABC News asked the U.S. delegation for comment and did not immediately hear back.

ABC News’ Clark Bentson contributed to this report from Pyeongchang, South Korea, and ABC News’ Conor Finnegan and Meridith McGraw contributed reporting from Washington.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/International/north-korea-open-talks-united-states-south-korea/story?id=53344216

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