WSJ reports that Kim Yong-chol met with CIA deputy director

CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop

Article implies meeting was closed-door and held in secret

CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop

According to a US news report, senior North Korean official Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and director of its United Front Department, met with the deputy director of the CIA during his visit to Washington, DC, on Jan. 17-19.

On Jan. 21, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Kim had held a closed-door meeting with CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop in Washington, DC, on Jan. 18. The WSJ didn’t specify the meeting’s time, location or agenda.

At 7:10 pm on Jan. 18, Kim’s second day in Washington, reporters spotted him heading to the elevator in a suit, without an overcoat, in the Dupont Circle Hotel, where he was staying, but he wasn’t seen leaving the building. If correct, this report implies that Kim and Bishop had a secret meeting, either inside or outside the hotel.

The Washington Post reported that Kim was supposed to meet with CIA Director Gina Haspel, but it hasn’t been confirmed whether the two actually met.

In a related story, the WSJ reported that intelligence channels between North Korea and the US have been operating since 2009, under the Barack Obama administration. In August of that year, Kim Yong-chol, then head of North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, and Joseph DeTrani, then director of the US National Counterproliferation Center under the Director of National Intelligence, arranged for former US President Bill Clinton to visit the North and bring back two US reporters who had been detained there.

A range of officials – including CIA Deputy Directors Michael Morell and Avril Haines since 2012 and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper since 2014 – have traveled to the North to secure the release of detained Americans. At a time of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula in Aug. 2017, the Trump administration activated a channel between Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA, and Kim Yong-chol, who helped set up the first North Korea-US summit in June 2018. The channel between intelligence officers has been maintained since then, the newspaper reported.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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