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South Korean President Moon Jae-in holds a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on June 15. (Yonhap News)
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S. Korean president and US State Department stress resumption of working-level talks
As South Korea and the US continue stressing the importance of resuming working-level North Korea-US talks amid their lull since the two sides’ Hanoi summit in February, many are now watching to see what choice North Korean leader Kim Jong-un makes. Speaking at a press conference on June 15 following a summit with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that “working-level talks first need to be held to achieve concrete progress in North Korea-US negotiations.” The remarks were seen as unusual coming from Moon, who has steered the Korean Peninsula situation in the past under a top-down approach involving the three sides’ leaders. “I believe that a summit between leaders based on working-level negotiations is the only way to avoid another episode like the second [North Korea-US] summit in Hanoi, which ended without an agreement,” he added. In a June 12 briefing, US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said Washington was “ready and willing to continue engagement on working-level negotiations with the North Koreans.” Diplomatic sources reported being aware of several messages to the North from the US since the Hanoi summit’s collapse. A scheduled South Korea visit on June 24 by Stephen Biegun, the US State Department special representative on North Korea, is being seen as having working-level negotiations with Pyongyang as an aim. The official position from Pyongyang has remained constant since a policy speech by Kim Jong-un on Apr. 20: the North has said it will leave the window open for dialogue until the end of the year, while demanding the US approach it with “new calculations.” A similar message was shared in a Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s statement released on June 4 ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Joint Statement from the North Korea-US summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018. Experts predicted that North Korea’s decision on whether to return to the negotiating table would depend on a range of factors including whether behind-the-scenes discussions are currently taking place with South Korea and the US, whether the North has completed its internal reorganization efforts, and how it views the past example of a joint communiqué with the US in 2000 fizzling out after a new administration arrived in office. “I don’t see North Korea as having any real reason to participate right now when there haven’t been any new ‘cards’ [from the US],” said University of North Korean Studies professor Koo Kab-woo. “In addition to the internal personnel reshuffling in North Korea, it doesn’t appear that the ‘end state’ for denuclearization demanded by the US has really been worked out,” Koo said. Hong Min, director of the North Korea research office at the Korea Institute for National Unification, suggested that Moon’s speech in Stockholm “may have been the result of positive messages being exchanged behind the scenes.” “The fact that [Stephen] Biegun is visiting South Korea so soon also appears to be part of that,” he added. “North Korea will agree [to discussions],” he predicted. By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
