Why Is North Korea Offering to Hold Talks with the US Now?

The North Koreans are likely offering to hold talks now to get what they can get out of negotiations and then set conditions for their next provocation cycle:

A senior North Korean official said Monday that the reclusive state is willing to hold talks with the United States, noting the door for dialogue between the two countries remains open, according to an official from Seoul’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.

The remarks from Kim Yong-chol, the North’s point man on South Korea, came in a meeting with Chung Eui-yong, chief of South Korea’s National Security Council and the top security advisor to President Moon Jae-in.

“Kim said the door remains open for dialogue with the United States. He said the North has also repeatedly expressed such a stance,” a ranking Cheong Wa Dae official told reporters, while speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kim’s remarks came one day after he told the South Korean president in a meeting that the North has enough willingness to hold bilateral talks with the United States.

He, however, attached no conditions for the talks, according to the presidential official.

The U.S. seemed to remain cautious, with White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders saying Washington will first see if Kim’s remarks represented the North’s first step toward denuclearization.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime has no intention of denuclearizing which means the talks will likely go no where.  However, before the talks go no where the Kim regime will try to get concessions out of the ROK.  The Moon administration is already floating the idea of suspending joint military exercises and economic aid for them suspending their nuclear and missile programs:

Moon has promoted a two-step roadmap to end the security crisis prompted by the North’s nuclear threats. According to his proposed first step, the North must place a moratorium on its nuclear and missile tests, freeze any further development of the technologies and join denuclearization negotiations. In return, the international community was to offer corresponding compensations. The second step would be actual nuclear dismantlement.

Moon, however, never made clear what Seoul and Washington would offer to Pyongyang in return for the first step, a freeze. Suspending or downsizing joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States has been discussed as a possible option, as well as an economic assistance package for the impoverished economy of the North.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

So basically the Kim regime gets significant concessions for doing nothing.  The economic assistance will likely include the reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the restarting of Mt. Kumgang tours, and the opening of the Masik Ski Resort to tourism.  This would essentially shred all the sanctions that the US has been trying to leverage against the ROK.  That is why we will likely see a renewed push for a “freeze deal” in the coming weeks and months.

After the Kim regime gets all they can out of talks they will then restart their nuclear and missile programs and blame “US hostility” or some other made up reason.  Their leftist supporters will of course all fall in line with the narrative.  We have seen this all play out before.  Any freeze deal they sign the Kim regime will find a way to cheat on it.  I fully expect they will continue with short and intermediate range ballistic missile testing claiming this is okay because they are not ICBMs.  I suspect they will use space launches to test their ICBM technology and claim it is for peaceful purposes.  They have done this before.

They will also likely continue efforts to miniaturize their nuclear technology to put on ICBM warheads.  Without inspections this will be easy for them to conceal.  Even if they get called out for cheating they will just deny it and their apologists will come out in force to support them.  Supporters of past nuclear deals kept claiming that North Korea was in compliance despite clear evidence they were not.

It will be interesting to see which direction the Trump administration wants to go.  If they want to kick this can down the road to deal with later, the freeze deal is a way to do it.