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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo greets North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Singapore on Aug. 4. (AFP)
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Impending visit fans hopes regarding end of-war declaration and NK-US negotiations
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is planning to visit North Korea at the end of this month, a source who is familiar with North Korea-US affairs said on Aug. 15. This permits the inference that North Korea and the US have reached a partial understanding about the end-of-war declaration and the disclosure and inspection of nuclear facilities and materials, issues about which they have been arguing since Pompeo’s third visit to the North in early July. On Aug. 14, Pompeo expressed optimism during a tweet in which he mentioned speaking on the phone with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha the day before and said that “We believe progress can be made.” Considering that South and North Korea have announced their agreement to hold a summit in Pyongyang in September, if Pompeo is able to arrange his fourth visit to the North, there is expected to be a positive change in affairs on the Korean Peninsula, where there have recently been signs of an impasse. “The inter-Korean summit will take place in mid-September, after Pompeo visits the North,” said a senior official in the South Korean government. “North Korea and the US agreed during a recent meeting to have Pompeo visit the North at the end of August,” the source said during a telephone interview with The Hankyoreh on Wednesday. The chief North Korean envoy to the working-level North Korea-US negotiations about the possibility of Pompeo visiting the North is reportedly Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui. It was not confirmed who represented the Americans in the negotiations. “North Korea and the US’ viewers are much closer than they were before,” the source said. More specifically, the North has reportedly adopted a more flexible attitude on the question of disclosing its nuclear facilities. “I’m told that the Americans have toned down their demands considerably,” the source said. This suggests that the US has walked back the demand made by White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, one of the leading hardliners on North Korea in the American government, for North Korea to hand over its nuclear warheads and ICBMs for dismantlement overseas. The source did admit to not definitely knowing “how far North Korea and the US have gotten in their recent working-level negotiations on the questions of the end-of-war declaration and North Korea’s disclosure [of its nuclear facilities and materials].” Another well-informed source said that “North Korea and the US have made progress in their recent backdoor negotiations, but the real negotiations will have to wait until Pompeo gets to Pyongyang.” In other words, we should not assume that converging views at the technical level will necessarily lead to an agreement between Pompeo and Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the Workers' Party of North Korea. Following Pompeo’s tweet that “We believe progress can be made,” US State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert emphasized during the daily press briefing on Aug. 14 that dialogue with North Korea is continuing and said that “we have certainly seen progress so far.” “Conversations with the government of North Korea are becoming a far more normal matter [. . .] We continue to work in good faith to move forward on that,” Nauert said when asked whether there had been progress on denuclearization. “We’ve seen the remains of service members brought home. That is certainly a step in the right direction. We’ve had conversations with a country [North Korea] that we hadn’t had one-on-one conversations with for many years. [. . .] We’re in a very different position today than we were just over a year ago [or . . .] six or eight months ago. So we think that that is progress,” she said. By Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporter, Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer, and Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
