[If such talks lead to a breakthrough and Mr. Kim visits South Korea, it would be the first such trip by a North Korean leader to the South beyond the Demilitarized Zone and could give the party of South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, a lift ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for April.]
By
Choe Sang-Hun
 |
|
A
picture released by North Korea’s state news agency this month shows Kim
Jong-un,
the
North’s leader, at the purported testing of a “super-large multiple rocket
launcher”
at
an undisclosed location. Credit Korean
Central News Agency
|
SEOUL,
South Korea — Kim Jong-un
could meet again with President Trump and even visit South Korea in November if
expected talks between Pyongyang and Washington make progress on eliminating
North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, South Korean intelligence officials told
lawmakers on Tuesday.
South Korean officials have been considering
inviting Mr. Kim to a conference of Southeast Asian countries that is planned
in Busan, a port city on the southeastern tip of South Korea, in November.
Neither North Korea nor the United States has
officially announced the resumption of dialogue. But after a monthslong hiatus,
denuclearization talks between the two countries will most likely take place
within “two or three weeks,” Kim Min-ki, a governing-party lawmaker, quoted
intelligence officials as saying during a closed-door parliamentary hearing on Tuesday
in Seoul, the South’s capital.
If such talks lead to a breakthrough and Mr.
Kim visits South Korea, it would be the first such trip by a North Korean
leader to the South beyond the Demilitarized Zone and could give the party of
South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, a lift ahead of parliamentary elections
scheduled for April.
When Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon met in Pyongyang,
the North Korean capital, last September, Mr. Kim promised to visit Seoul soon.
But that promise was never fulfilled as subsequent talks between North Korea
and the United States stalled over deep differences over how to denuclearize
the North, damaging inter-Korean relations.
North Korean officials have also recently
indicated that talks with Washington could resume in coming weeks. If such
working-level talks were successful, Mr. Trump and the North Korean leader
could hold another summit this year, said Mr. Kim, the South Korean lawmaker.
Lee Eun-jae, an opposition lawmaker who also
attended the parliamentary session with intelligence officials, quoted them as
saying that Kim Jong-un also “may come to Busan depending on the result of
denuclearization talks” with Washington.
Mr. Moon, the South Korean leader, has been
desperate for a breakthrough in North Korean-United States talks in order to
revive his signature policy of improving inter-Korean ties.
He has been hit hard by a slew of domestic
and external problems in recent months, including a slowing economy and a
diplomatic row with Japan.
His approval ratings have fallen in recent
weeks after damaging revelations in the news media around his appointment of
Cho Kuk, one of his former presidential aides, as justice minister. On Monday,
prosecutors raided Mr. Cho’s home to collect evidence on a flood of allegations
of ethical lapses in his family that have dominated newspaper headlines for
weeks.
Mr. Moon’s political stock soared when he met
Mr. Kim three times last year, helping arrange his summit meetings with Mr.
Trump in an effort to work out a deal on dismantling the North’s nuclear
weapons and establishing a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
But the enthusiasm for Mr. Moon’s approach
cratered after Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump abruptly ended their second summit, in
Hanoi, Vietnam, in February, without a deal on how fast and thoroughly North
Korea should dismantle its nuclear program.
North Korea has since rejected dialogue with
South Korea, dismissing Mr. Moon’s role as mediator and calling him “officious”
and “double-dealing.”
Despite such slights, Mr. Moon has resumed
his efforts to revive diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula, meeting on Monday with
Mr. Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Mr. Moon said he hoped that working-level
negotiations between the United States and North Korea could be held soon to
lay the groundwork for another summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim. But Mr.
Trump indicated Monday that he wanted to know what he could achieve in another
meeting with Mr. Kim before committing himself to another summit.
“Right now, people would like to see that
happen,” Mr. Trump said on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting. “I want
to know what’s going to be coming out of it. We can know a lot before the
summit takes place.”
The mood for resuming dialogue with North
Korea has improved since Mr. Trump removed his hawkish national security
adviser, John R. Bolton, and indicated that he might try a “new method” in
negotiating with North Korea. Last week, the North’s nuclear envoy, Kim
Myong-gil, praised Mr. Trump’s “wise political decision” and said he would like
to be “optimistic” about coming talks with Washington.
