[Experts said the speech kept the window open for diplomacy but didn’t offer much hope for substantive progress. Meanwhile, North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal.]
By
Simon Denyer
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People
watch a TV news program on North Korea at the major railway station in
Seoul
on Saturday. (Lee Jin-Man/AP)
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TOKYO
— North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un said he would be prepared to meet President Trump for a third summit,
but only if the United States fundamentally changes its approach. He also
warned that his patience is running out.
In a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly
in Pyongyang, Kim offered no hints of new concessions or ideas from his regime
after the failure of February’s summit, putting the blame squarely on the
United States and throwing the ball into Washington’s court.
Experts said the speech kept the window open
for diplomacy but didn’t offer much hope for substantive progress. Meanwhile,
North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal.
“If the U.S. adopts a correct posture and
comes forward for the third DPRK-U. S. summit with a certain methodology that
can be shared with us, we can think of holding one more talk,” Kim said,
referring to his country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea.
But Kim said that he did not feel the need to
meet Trump just to secure sanctions relief and that the prospect of another
summit like February’s meeting in Hanoi was “not inviting.”
“Anyway, we will wait for a bold decision
from the U.S. with patience till the end of this year, but I think it will
definitely be difficult to get such a good opportunity as the previous summit,”
he said.
But Kim told the assembly, the regime’s
equivalent of a parliament, on Friday that the United States was miscalculating
if it thinks it can bring his government to its knees through sanctions and
“maximum pressure,” adding that Washington was making suggestions that are
“absolutely impractical.”
“If it keeps thinking that way, it will never
be able to move the DPRK even a knuckle, nor gain any interests no matter how
many times it may sit for talks with the DPRK,” Kim said in remarks carried by
the state Korean Central News Agency on Saturday.
At the Hanoi summit, North Korea offered to
close down a key nuclear site in return for the lifting of almost all of the
economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Trump asked
Kim to “go big” by turning over his entire nuclear, chemical and biological
arsenal and production capability in return for a “bright future” economically.
Trump appears convinced that North Korea has
tremendous economic potential and seems wedded to the notion that Kim might
abandon his nuclear program in return for U.S. help in realizing that
potential. But experts also see the hand of national security adviser John
Bolton in the administration’s maximalist demands, advancing what amounts to an
unrealistic ultimatum.
In tweets Saturday, Trump described his
relationship with Kim as “excellent” and said he would be open to a third
summit to “fully understand where we each stand.” But Trump offered no new
proposals.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the
United States had continued to have “conversations” with North Korea even after
Hanoi.
“I’m confident that what we did in Hanoi put
us in a better place to move forward,” he told reporters on a trip to South
America. “Chairman Kim made a commitment, he made the commitment to me
personally no fewer than half a dozen times and to President Trump that he
wanted to denuclearize.”
In his speech, Kim also complained that the
United States had resumed military exercises with South Korea this year,
despite what he said was a direct commitment by Trump to suspend them.
“These seriously rattle us,” he said. “As
wind is bound to bring waves, the U.S. open hostile policy toward the DPRK will
naturally bring our corresponding acts.”
But Kim did not spell out what his response
might be, after ominously warning in a New Year’s Day speech that he might be
forced to seek a “new way” if the United States did not drop its unilateral
demands and sanctions pressure.
He also reiterated that his problem was with
Trump’s administration, not the president.
“But as President Trump keeps saying, the
personal ties between me and him are not hostile like the relations between the
two countries and we still maintain good relations, as to be able to exchange
letters asking about health anytime if we want,” he said.
Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official who
teaches at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, said time is on
North Korea’s side.
“A Trump-Kim personal relationship benefits
Kim and North Korea, not the United States,” he said. “So, it’s no surprise
that Kim is open to the pomp and pageantry of a third summit.”
But Jackson said there was no sign that Kim
was willing to make the nuclear concessions demanded by Trump’s “uber-hawks,”
implying that the summit-driven process will continue to drag out without
bringing nuclear stability to the Korean Peninsula.
Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow in the
Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, also saw no
signs of a change in Kim’s negotiating position — that North Korea expects to
see “corresponding” concessions from the United States in return for its
moratorium on nuclear and missile testing announced last year.
The only difference now is that Kim has given
the United States until the end of the year.
“A lack of U.S.-North Korea progress in the
meantime will allow Kim to continue the quantitative expansion of his nuclear
forces,” Panda said. “He doesn’t need to test nuclear devices or missiles to
continue building his forces out.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with
Trump in Washington on Thursday in a bid to keep the dialogue alive, and the
presidential Blue House said in a statement Saturday that it would “do what we
can in order to maintain the current momentum for dialogue, and help
negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea resume at an early date.”
But Kim was sharply critical of the South
Korean government, arguing that it should not act as a “mediator” or “booster”
for hostile forces, but instead act in the interests of the whole Korean
Peninsula.
There will be no improvement in North-South
ties unless South Korea ends military exercises with the United States, he
said, “and unless a fundamental liquidation is put to the anachronistic
arrogance and hostile policy of the U.S., which creates a deliberate hurdle in
the improvement of ties while coming forward with unilateral gangsterlike
demands.”
Cheon Seong-whun, who served as national
security adviser to former conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye,
said he sees a “deadlock.”
“Kim Jong Un says he will stick to his
position and is pressuring Washington to make concessions,” he said. “It’s a
non-starter.”
Min Joo Kim in Seoul, John Hudson in South
America and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
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