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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a press conference in Washington, DC, on Mar. 15. (AFP/Yonhap News)
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Pyongyang and Washington are playing a risky game of playing tough
The Trump administration appears to be in a quandary after North Korea delivered the ball back into Washington’s court by raising the specter of “considering a suspension of dialogue.” The US has so far refrained from responding aggressively, instead sending the signal that it wants to continue discussions with the North. Washington now appears to be attempting to gauge Pyongyang’s precise aims while managing the situation so that dialogue does not collapse completely. As of Saturday, Mar. 16, the US has yet to make any official statements following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks simultaneously stressing the continuation of dialogue and honoring of promises in response to a press conference by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui on Mar. 15. With Trump focusing for the moment on domestic issues – including his Mar. 15 veto of a congressional resolution to terminate the national state of emergency over the building of a border wall – Washington has not responded openly on North Korea issues as of Mar. 16. The reaction so far from the US appeared to be focused more on maintaining the current conditions for dialogue rather than responding in a provocative way. During a Mar. 15 press conference, Pompeo avoided denunciations of Pyongyang while sending the message that the US was “hopeful that we can continue to have conversation” and had “every expectation” that North Korea would not resume nuclear or missile testing. The press conference that day was originally arranged to criticize a Senate resolution calling for an end to US military support for Saudi Arabian-led allied forces in the Yemeni civil war and an ICC investigation into the US military’s war crimes in Afghanistan – but the reporters’ questions focused on Choe’s remarks from the evening before. Responding in the affirmative when asked if he had seen Choe’s press conference, Pompeo first stressed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s commitment to denuclearization. “We continued to work between Singapore and Hanoi to deliver on that [commitment],” he said. “We’ve had hostages return. We have them [North Korea] having stopped missile testing and nuclear testing. We are hopeful that we can continue to have conversation, negotiations,” he continued. “I saw the remarks that she [Choe] made. She left open the possibility that negotiations would continue for sure,” he added, in an apparent reference to Choe’s remarks in her press conference that Kim and Trump “still have a good personal relationship and have been astonishingly compatible.” “It’s the administration’s desire that we continue to have conversations around this,” Pompeo said. While Pompeo rejected Choe’s naming of him and National Security Advisor John Bolton as the figures responsible for the talks breaking down, he also stressed that he hoped to continue dialogue with his counterpart, Workers’ Party of Korea Vice Chairman Kim Yong-chol. “They’re wrong about that,” he said of the remarks from North Korea. “I was there [in Hanoi]. My relationship with Kim Yong-chol is professional. We have detailed conversations,” he continued. “I expect that we will continue to do that,” he said, adding that Kim Yong-chol was “the counterpart that the North Koreans have put forward for me.” Regarding Choe’s criticisms of his “gangster-like” approach, Pompeo said, “It’s not the first time.” “I have a vague recollection of being called ‘gangster-like’ from a visit that I took one time previously, and following that we continued to have very professional conversations,” he noted. “I have every expectation that we’ll be able to continue to do that,” he added. In his remarks, Pompeo signaled his hope that dialogue channels would continue to work – including his own senior-level negotiations with Kim Yong-chol – while dismissing the personal attacks against him from Pyongyang. The possibility of behind-the-scenes communication for sake of diaglogue Pompeo also hinted at the possibility of attempted behind-the-scenes communication for the sake of dialogue. When asked what “level” the continuing talks with North Korea had been occurring at, he replied, “I’m not going to talk about the negotiations. They’re ongoing.” Speaking in an interview with New York’s AM 970 radio station aired on Mar. 17, Bolton said the North Koreans had been “unfortunately not willing to do what they needed to do.” Commenting on Choe’s press conference – which took place during the late evening on Mar. 14 in US time – Bolton was reported by the congressional news website The Hill as saying, “Just last night they issued an unhelpful statement that they’re thinking of going back to nuclear and ballistic missile testing, which would not be a good idea on their part.” Considering that Bolton said that Choe’s interview had taken place “just last night,” his interview with AM 970 appears to have taken place on Mar. 15. US news website The Hill quoted Bolton as saying that North Korea’s “leader Kim Jong-un was unwilling to take the necessary steps to reach a nuclear deal with the US.” “President Trump wants this threat resolved through negotiations. [. . .] He wants North Korea to be free of nuclear weapons, that’s for sure,” Bolton said. On Mar. 15, Bolton told reporters that Choe wasn’t correct when she identified him as the cause of the rupture in the summit. But he refrained from responding immediately or pushing back harshly by noting that there was a lot to discuss inside the US government before a response could be issued. Resumption of North’s nuclear tests would shatter Trump’s diplomatic credentials Pompeo also emphasized on several occasions that he doesn’t want North Korea to end its moratorium on nuclear weapon and missile tests. “In Hanoi, on multiple occasions, [Kim Jong-un] spoke directly to the President and made a commitment that he would not resume nuclear testing, nor would he resume missile testing. So that’s Chairman Kim’s word. We have every expectation that he will live up to that commitment,” Pompeo said. By emphasizing that Kim had made the promise himself, Pompeo was pressuring him to keep his word. Trump has described North Korea’s suspension of nuclear tests and missile launches as one of the signature achievements of his North Korean policy and even said that, as long as there aren’t any tests, there’s no need to rush. That means that if the North does resume nuclear and missile tests, Trump’s diplomatic credentials would suffer a serious blow. For now, the US is likely to focus its efforts on preventing the North from resuming tests. Such concerns are apparently behind the restraint shown by not only Pompeo but also “super hawk” Bolton in not provoking North Korea. But since the US has rejected North Korea’s proposal of step-by-step denuclearization and has clearly staked out its demand for an all-or-nothing agreement that will include the elimination of not only the Yongbyon nuclear complex but all of the North’s nuclear facilities and weapons of mass destruction, it won’t be easy for the US to back down for the time being. On Mar. 14, US State Department Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun met with envoys from UN Security Council member states to urge them to implement sanctions on the North, showing that the US is also holding to its plan of maintaining sanctions until denuclearization. This makes it very likely that the tug-of-war between the two sides will continue for some time. If Kim makes a personal announcement about resuming nuclear and missile testing, the situation could get even worse. Prior to that, there’s still a possibility of direct contact between North Korea and the US or mediation by the South Korean government. Amid these developments, some argue that both North Korea and the US need to exercise restraint in their words and actions. In a Mar. 16 article titled “The US and North Korea Are Back to Talking Tough,” US current affairs journal The Atlantic noted how hardliners on both sides, namely Choe and Bolton, have taken center stage recently. The rise of such hardliners, the journal said, was partially aimed at appease each country’s domestic hardliners. “There is a very fine line, however, between applying pressure and shattering a delicate and deteriorating diplomatic process,” the journal said. “As Chung-in Moon, a foreign-policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, wrote, citing the way in which the spat between Choe and Pence nearly sabotaged the first Trump-Kim summit, ‘Mutual restraint in word and deed is essential for the resuscitation of negotiation. The surest way to derail the negotiations and precipitate a potential catastrophe would be for North Korea to engage in any nuclear or missile tests.’” By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
