[Editorial] NK and US should draw up timeframe for both denuclearization and security guarantee

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (left) enthusiastically shakes hands with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after their meeting on May 9 in Pyongyang. (Korean Central News Agency/Yonhap News)

The US government has announced that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be visiting North Korea between July 5 and 7. Pompeo’s visit comes 23 days after the North Korea-US summit in Singapore on June 12, giving the impression that the follow-up talks underwent an unexpected delay. This shows just how long it took the two sides to gear up for the negotiations. Pompeo is also likely to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and it will be interesting to see whether concrete progress is made toward drafting a roadmap for North Korea’s denuclearization and a security guarantee for the Pyongyang regime.

Prior to the announcement of Pompeo’s visit to North Korea, US National Security Advisor John Bolton said that the idea of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles within a year would be brought up during the negotiations. The proposal of a one-year period of time is striking, since it suggests that the US has created some kind of timeline for denuclearization.

While it is unclear for now the extent to which the North will go along with this, the North is no doubt well aware that speeding up denuclearization could also accelerate the normalization of its relations with the US and the development of inter-Korean relations. Of course, what the North wants is the simultaneous implementation of denuclearization and a security guarantee for the regime, so the US needs to offer a timeframe for the security guarantee that corresponds to the timeframe for denuclearization.

Leading up to Pompeo’s visit to North Korea, the American press has released a series of reports quoting American intelligence officials who say that Kim Jong-un has no intention of denuclearizing and that the North is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons. Most of these reports, which are a mixture of speculation and exaggeration, should not be trusted implicitly. Even so, this issue cannot be simply ignored, since it represents a push to incite skepticism about the North Korea-US negotiations.

North Korea and the US need to send a clear message that can sweep away such skepticism inside the US. If the negotiations end inconclusively, they will increase distrust of the North and leave the Trump administration with less room to maneuver. That’s something to which North Korea and the US need to pay attention.

Amid all this, news website Axios printed an intriguing story suggesting that a second North Korea-US summit might be held in New York around the time of the UN General Assembly toward the end of September. Since Trump already invited Kim Jong-un to visit the US during their summit in Singapore, the fact is that Kim and Trump could meet at any time. If they hold a summit in New York, it is possible to imagine Kim making his debut at the UN General Assembly as well. But for such things to become a reality, the North Korea-US negotiations must achieve adequate results. That makes Pompeo’s visit to the North even more significant. We hope that North Korea and the US will put their heads together to reach clear progress on drawing up a timeframe for denuclearization.

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