Former US ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg said he once suggested that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un be invited to the US for an “orientation trip” when Kim’s father, former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, still led North Korea, but the idea was rejected, which he called a mistake.
Gregg spoke to reporters on Friday about his new memoir. He said he wrote to US Vice President Joe Biden when Biden was still leading the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying Kim Jong-un should be invited because he was educated abroad, spoke some English and would be in power for decades.
However, Gregg said the idea was brushed aside amid worries about what Republicans might think, “so we missed doing something. I think there was a chance for us to act early on and make a huge difference in a young man who is going to be around for a long, long time.”
Gregg led the Korea Society at the time and now chairs the Pacific Century Institute. Kim Jong-un took power of nuclear-armed North Korea after his father died in late 2011.
Gregg is highly critical of US policy on North Korea under US President Barack Obama and former US president George W. Bush, saying he once hand-carried an offer to restart US-North Korea talks into the Bush White House and was told that talks would only reward “bad behavior.”
“Most of our Korea experts are under the misapprehension that North Korea is going to collapse,” he said.
Kim Jong-un is willing to be like his gregarious grandfather, former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, instead of his more withdrawn father, Gregg said.
“So here is a guy who wants to talk, and we need to start talking with him,” he said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman have the intelligence to do it, but must be exhausted from talks with Iran over nuclear issues, Gregg said.
“So I don’t see any major changes coming, I regret to say,” he added. “I would love to be surprised.”
The nation playing its card most adeptly right now with North Korea is Russia, which has invited Kim Jong-un to Moscow next month for what would be his first official foreign visit as leader, Gregg said.
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