Posted on : Feb.1,2019 18:32 KST

US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun during a discussion on North Korea organized by Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center on Jan. 31. (US Department of StateDefense webcast)

Trump indicates time and location for 2nd summit to be announced early next week

On Jan. 31, US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun emphasized that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had promised to shut down North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility and said that the US was also preparing corresponding measures of its own. This is also expected to be the focus of Biegun’s discussion with Kim Hyok-chol, former North Korean ambassador to Spain, in their working-level negotiations, which are likely to be held in Panmunjom early next week.

On Thursday, Biegun was one of the speakers in a discussion about North Korea that was organized by Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. During the speech, Biegun said he was planning to discuss the corresponding measures that the US would provide North Korea in exchange for the North’s destruction of its enriched uranium facilities during his meeting with Kim next week.

“We are prepared to discuss many actions that could help build trust between our two countries,” Biegun said in his speech, adding that the US administration is prepared to take action simultaneously and in parallel with North Korea.

Biegun said that one of the conditions for discussing the US’ corresponding measures was the dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility promised by North Korea. “Chairman Kim also committed, in both the joint statement from the aforementioned Pyongyang summit as well as during [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s] October meetings in Pyongyang, to the dismantlement and destruction of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities,” Biegun said.

This was a reference to Kim’s statement that, if the US took corresponding measures, North Korea would take additional steps of its own, such as permanently closing its Yongbyon nuclear facility. Yongbyon is North Korea’s key nuclear facility and the place where it produces plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the primary materials for its nuclear weapons.

“When Biegun mentioned ‘plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities,’ he was referring to the Yongbyon nuclear facilities,” said a diplomatic source.

US signals it has backed away from prior demands

But Biegun also emphasized that the complete disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear program would be necessary for “final” denuclearization and that sanctions would not be lifted until denuclearization was complete. “Before the process of denuclearization can be final, we must also have a complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean weapons of mass destruction missile programs [. . .] through a comprehensive declaration. We must reach agreement on expert access and monitoring mechanisms of key sites to international standards. And ultimately, we need to ensure the removal and destruction of stockpiles of fissile material, weapons, missiles, launchers, and other weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

“All of this must be addressed in a roadmap of working-level negotiations that will be essential if we are to put into place the necessary conditions to fundamentally transform US-North Korean relations,” Biegun went on to say. This suggests that the US has backed away from its prior demand that North Korea make a full disclosure of its nuclear program at the outset of negotiations and has delayed this to the final stage of the negotiations.

Biegun also said that the US “will not lift sanctions until denuclearization is complete.” Once denuclearization is complete, he added, the US is prepared to find ways to attract global investment to North Korea.

Biegun furthermore made brief mention of the fact that the US has a contingency plan prepared in the event that the diplomatic process with North Korea fails. When a member of the audience asked Biegun if the question of withdrawing US troops from the Korean Peninsula might be addressed in the North Korea-US negotiations, he said that the US was “not involved in any diplomatic discussion” of that subject.

Biegun to travel to Seoul to on Feb. 3

In a related story, the US State Department announced on Jan. 31 that “Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun will travel to Seoul Feb. 3 for a meeting with ROK Special Representative Lee Do-hoon. Special Representative Biegun will also have follow up meetings with his North Korean counterpart to discuss next steps to advance our objective of the final fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and steps to make further progress on all the commitments the two leaders made in Singapore.”

After holding deliberations with Lee Do-hoon in Seoul, Biegun appears set to head to Panmunjom early the following week for working-level talks with his North Korean counterpart, namely Kim Hyok-chol.

During a meeting with reporters at the White House on Jan. 31, US President Donald Trump said that “tremendous progress” had been made on North Korea. When asked whether an agreement had been reached on the time and location of the second North Korea-US summit, he said, “Yeah, we’re going to announce it very soon. We’ll be announcing it early next week.”

As for the location of the summit, Trump said, “We’re going to a certain location. I think most of you know where the location is. I don’t think it’s any great secret.” This remark implies that Vietnam has been chosen as the site, as numerous news sources have reported. Both the South Korean and foreign press have named the Vietnamese cities of Da Nang and Hanoi as likely sites of the summit.

On the previous day, Jan. 30, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during an interview with Fox News that the second North Korea-US summit would be held at a location in Asia at the end of February and added that he’d dispatched a team to that site.

Given the impending announcement of the exact date and location of the second summit – which previously had only been officially slated to occur at the end of February – and as working-level negotiations about the summit’s agenda of denuclearization and corresponding measures and deliberations about the logistics get underway, the countdown to the second round of nuclear talks appears to have begun.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

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