US President Donald Trump agreed to hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the end of next month. What the two leaders hope to achieve remains a mystery.
The summit announcement came after a 90-minute White House meeting on Friday last week between Trump and Kim Yong-chol, one of the North Korean leader’s top aides. They discussed “denuclearization and a second summit,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Hucklebee Sanders said.
Neither the administration nor the North Koreans offered much else about what they had agreed to and what would be gained from the planned summit.
Illustration: Mountain People
That only raised more questions because so little progress has been made toward the US’ ultimate goal — getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons — since the first meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June last year.
I don’t think we have any concrete agreement,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who is now at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. “Obviously Kim [Jong-un] doesn’t want to meet with the bureaucrats who would make him agree to something, and I think Trump would welcome the distraction right now.”
The talks offered Trump a departure from the partisan stalemate over the US government shutdown and the continued drip of investigations into his Russia dealings. The US president’s approval ratings have rarely been as high as they were in the aftermath of the first summit, when he declared North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat.
More than seven months later, North Korea has made no commitments to allow weapons inspections or dismantle its growing arsenal of warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The announcement suggested that the US is softening its refusal to relax sanctions against North Korea, since Kim Jong-un had earlier this month threatened to walk away from talks if Trump did not compromise.
“The Trump-Kim Yong-chol meeting was arguably an indication that the US president has deprioritized the goal of complete denuclearization of North Korea for the sake of another mega-diplomatic event with Kim Jong-un, when there is no positive sign from Pyongyang that it will ever commit to a denuclearization process,” said Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.
The schedule leaves little time for negotiators to craft a detailed agreement, especially while the shutdown hampers bureaucratic work in Washington.
Kim Jong-un is likely to raise his price. In speeches, state media commentaries and meetings with his Chinese and South Korean counterparts, he has laid out a remarkably transparent list of demands to break the deadlock in nuclear talks.
His agenda ranges from restarting economic projects frozen by sanctions, formally ending the Korean War to weakening the US-South Korean military alliance.
The question for Trump is what he is willing to give up — and can he get enough to justify the cost?
Here’s what we know Kim Jong-un wants:
SANCTIONS RELIEF
Since Trump withdrew his war threats and launched talks with Kim Jong-un last year, the US-backed sanctions against North Korea’s economy remain his strongest bargaining chip. Kim Jong-un has made it clear he expects to get at least some penalties lifted, denouncing them as “vicious” and threatening in his New Year’s address to take a “new path,” if the US does not ease off.
Until now, Trump administration officials have insisted that all the penalties remain until Kim Jong-un agrees to “the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea.”
US Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News that the US would seek a “verifiable plan” to declare North Korea’s nuclear sites and weapons stockpiles as the result of a second summit, not before it, as officials had earlier insisted.
South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Kyung-wha on Wednesday last week said that the country was discussing “corresponding measures” with the US to reward the North’s steps toward denuclearization.
Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s address, in which he cited joint railway, tourism and manufacturing projects with South Korea, might offer clues into what those measures could entail. Getting those projects moving will require exemptions or repeal of US, South Korean and UN sanctions.
He also made an unusually frank acknowledgment about his country’s power shortages, which could be aided by relaxing UN fuel embargoes.
US envoy to North Korea talks, Stephen Biegun, last month said that the administration was considering looser restrictions on getting humanitarian aid and workers into the country.
Biegun told a meeting with US non-governmental organizations earlier this month that they should resume applications for permission to visit, National Committee on North Korea executive director Keith Luse said.
NUCLEAR STATUS
Seven months since shaking hands with Trump in Singapore, Kim Jong-un has shown little interest in giving up the nuclear arsenal that his regime views as essential to ward off a US attack.
In fact, independent analysis shows the country’s weapons production likely expanded last year, probably adding several intercontinental ballistic missiles and enough fissile material for about six more nuclear bombs.
He has also resisted US demands for a detailed list of his nuclear assets, with state media last month comparing it to handing over a target list. Still, he has repeatedly shown a willingness to dismantle facilities used for provocative weapons tests, which experts say he no longer needs.
Similarly, North Korea might be willing to dispense with its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear plant, something he offered in exchange for US concessions during a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in September last year. While Kim Jong-un has since moved on to uranium-fueled bombs, the move could help jump start the denuclearization process.
Non-proliferation analysts say that in the long run, Kim Jong-un’s strategy appears to be quietly fortifying his arsenal while creating the diplomatic climate necessary for North Korea to be tolerated as a nuclear state, such as India or Israel.
WEAKER US ALLIANCE
From the moment Kim Jong-un offered talks to participate in South Korea’s Winter Olympics last year, he has put increasing pressure on the country’s 70-year-old alliance with the US. Trump has provided him an unusually receptive audience in the White House, exemplified by his unilateral decision to suspend major US-South Korea military training exercises after their June summit.
North Korea’s recent statements have upped the ante, asserting that Kim Jong-un’s agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula included an expectation that US nuclear-capable planes and warships also leave the region.
In his New Year’s speech, he called on South Korea to stop all military exercises with foreign forces “given that the North and South have committed themselves to advancing along the road of peace and prosperity.”
Even North Korea’s desire for a declaration formally ending the Korean War — a concession the US has so far withheld — could support that goal.
Replacing the 1953 ceasefire with a peace treaty would remove a rationale for having about 28,500 troops stationed on the peninsula, even if the North’s nuclear weapons and China’s rising military remain.
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