North Korea says high-level talks with a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were “regrettable” and has accused Washington of trying to unilaterally pressure the country into abandoning its nukes.
The statement by an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman on Saturday came hours after Pompeo concluded two days of talks with North Korean officials led by Kim Yong Chol.
The statement says that the United States betrayed the spirit of last month’s summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by making unilateral demands on “CVID,” or the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.
It says the outcome of the follow-up talks was “very concerning” because it has led to a “dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearization that had been firm.” [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but my best guess on what is going on is that North Korea wants some of the sanctions dropped for the little to nothing they have done to denuclearize. This is their standard playbook from past negotiations.
The other thing that is in their playbook is using the remains of US servicemembers killed during the Korean War as bargaining chips. When the return of 200 war remains was announced I was wondering what the cost would be? Now we know they were just bargaining chips by the Kim regime to get sanctions dropped.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has wrapped up two days of talks with senior North Korean officials without meeting Kim Jong Un but with commitments for new discussions on denuclearization and the repatriation of the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War.
The Kim regime is only committing to further discussions on the return of the remains which proves they are simply bargaining chips to get what the Kim regime wants which is some of the sanctions dropped. South Korean President Moon is ready to send the Kim regime cash and aid, but the sanctions are preventing him from doing so.
What will be important to watch now is if the Trump administration flinches and allows some of the sanctions to be dropped to keep the negotiations going. If they do then truly nothing has changed, the Trump administration is just the latest government to be fooled by the Kim regime’s false promises to denuclearize.
As I have been saying the suspension of joint exercises with South Korea is something that is easily reversible and can be used as negotiating leverage against the Kim regime:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, toasts North Korean officials, including Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee Kim Yong Chol, in New York City, May 30, 2018.
President Donald Trump will resume military exercises with South Korea if the North stops negotiating in good faith over its nuclear weapons program, the top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.
The tempered expectations were markedly different from the optimistic tone set by Trump in a series of tweets earlier in the day. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but I think we will know whether North Korea is negotiating in good faith by the Key Resolve exercise timeframe early next year. If North Korea is not making any irreversible progress towards denuclearization I would expect this exercise would be executed as scheduled.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a senior North Korean official met in New York Wednesday as both sides push to salvage a highly anticipated summit between their leaders.
The two had a 90-minute working dinner at the Manhattan residence of the U.S. deputy representative to the United Nations, with 13 days to go until a potential June 12 summit in Singapore between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Kim Yong-chol, a vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, arrived at JFK International Airport earlier in the day, becoming the highest-ranking North Korean to visit the U.S. since 2000.
His meeting with Pompeo is expected to determine whether the two sides have enough common ground to go ahead with the summit on dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for concessions. [Yonhap]
It looks like Kim Jong-un has paid the price for admission to a summit with President Trump:
People watch a TV news report on screen, showing portraits of three Americans, Kim Dong Chul, left, Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song, right, detained in the North Korea at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 3, 2018. (Photo: Ahn Young-joon/AP)
President Trump announced on Wednesday that three Americans who were being held by North Korea have been released.
“I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday. “They seem to be in good health.”
Pompeo flew to Pyongyang on Tuesday to meet with Kim Jong Un ahead of Trump’s planned summit with the North Korean leader. Trump described it as a “good meeting” and said a date and time for his summit with Kim has been set. [Yahoo News]
I am glad these guys are back and I am sure it is a relief for all the families involved, however I hope the media does not treat them as some kind of heroes. I have said this repeatedly, but I have little sympathy for people stupid enough to travel to North Korea in the first place. Anyone going to North Korea takes the chance of the regime detaining at anytime for the most arbitrary things in order to use them as political pawns.
Here are the three Americans that were detained and I would not be surprised if the real crimes all three of them committed was promoting Christianity in North Korea:
Kim Dong-chul: Supposed Christian missionary that North Korea accused of spying for South Korea.
Tony Kim: He worked at a university in China and was teaching a course at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) for a few months before being detained at the airport when he attempted to fly back to China. He was accused of the crime of trying to overthrow the government.
Kim Hak-song: He is an ordained as an evangelical Christian pastor affiliated with the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles. Like Tony Kim, he was working as a professor at PUST before being detained on unspecified charges.
Mike Pompeo met with KJU 3-4 times during his 3-day stay in Pyongyang per Asahi Shimbun. KJU reportedly said he's on the same wavelength with Pompeo: "This is the first time I'm meeting someone who has the same fire in the belly as I do" (loose translation)https://t.co/frgRdVqTmj
I hope Kim Jong-un is sincere about this, but I remain extremely skeptical:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is said to have sent his message to the Trump administration that he would accept a denuclearization verification and intensive inspection by international inspectors including the International Atomic Energy Agency’s visit to its nuclear facilities. Kim, who announced that the regime would shutter a nuclear site in Punggye-ri over the weekend, is reported to have made more detailed reference to the possible inspection and verification for denuclearization. With the upcoming bilateral summit between Washington and Pyongyang, the negotiations on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will go more smoothly.
CIA director and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo secretly met with Kim earlier this month to lay the groundwork for direct North Korea-U.S. talks under the condition of the regime’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, South Korea’s intelligence agency said on Monday. Acting as a special envoy for Trump, Pompeo strongly urged North Korea to allow an international verification procedure to check that regime dismantles the nuclear program.
Kim reportedly said he would freeze the nuclear program, report any nuclear activities, and allow international inspectors to visit its facilities only if Washington engages in sincere negotiations, according to observations by South Korea’s intelligence agency. Pompeo is reported to have raised the need for intensive verification procedure in a short period time, citing that North Korea previously expelled IAEA inspectors. He also said inspectors may have to carry out a special inspection into nuclear facilities additionally, if necessary. Kim is said to have not raised any objection to these demands. On the timing and scope of nuclear inspections, Kim will, however, make more cautious decisions after taking into deep consideration what he will gain in return. [Donga Ilbo]
It will be interesting to hear what the details of this were if they are ever released:
Mike Pompeo
CIA Director Mike Pompeo made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend as an envoy for President Trump to meet with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to two people with direct knowledge of the trip.
The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emissaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks.
The clandestine mission, which has not previously been reported, came soon after Pompeo was nominated to be secretary of state. [Washington Post]
Considering how the Kim regime has received large rewards for little to nothing in return from past nuclear agreements, they have lost all benefit of the doubt from the Trump administration:
Mike Pompeo
The United States will not reward North Korea before the regime “permanently, irreversibly” dismantles its nuclear weapons program, the nominee to be the top U.S. diplomat said Thursday.
Mike Pompeo, the nominee for U.S. secretary of state, told his Senate confirmation hearing that the Trump administration does not plan to repeat the failures of past negotiations that provided Pyongyang with economic aid before its nuclear program was undone.
“It is the intention of the president and the administration not to do that this time to make sure that before we provide rewards, we get the outcome permanently, irreversibly, that it is that we hope to achieve,” said Pompeo, who currently serves as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“It is a tall order, but I am hopeful that President Trump can achieve that through sound diplomacy,” he said. [Korea Times]
Rex Tillerson has been rumored for quite some time to be on thin ice with President Trump. Apparently the agreement to a summit between Kim Jong-un and President Trump is what has caused his firing:
Rex Tillerson
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired on Twitter after returning from an Africa trip in which he was out of the loop on North Korean talks and contradicted the White House position on Russia’s responsibility for poisoning a British spy.
In other words, his last week on the job was just like any other.
In his 14-month tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, Tillerson often found himself trying to interpret President Trump’s mercurial and contradictory foreign policy to the rest of the world.
He reassured NATO allies that the United States remained committed to the alliance even after the president threatened to pull out over “dues” that Trump believed were owed directly to the United States. (They weren’t.)
He tried to salvage the Iran nuclear deal through a European-brokered fix to the Obama-era agreement, rather than having Trump scuttle the deal completely.
Trump specifically cited differences over the Iran deal Tuesday. “I thought it was terrible, I guess, he feels it was OK.”
Now, Trump is heading into an unprecedented face-to-face meeting with North Korea’sKim Jong Un over that country’s nuclear program. The timing of the move was designed to allow Trump to put a new team in place in advance of those talks, said a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a personnel decision. [USA Today]
You can read more at the link, but Tillerson late last week undercut Trump in regards to the upcoming summit:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared Friday to undercut President Donald Trump’s expected meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, stressing that only “talks” rather than “negotiations” would take place when the two men sit down sometime in the coming months.
Tillerson, who has clashed with Trump and seen his own work on North Korea publicly admonished by the president, did not clarify his distinction between talks and negotiations when speaking with the Associated Press. [Newsweek]
CIA director Mike Pompeo is taking over for Tillerson if confirmed by the Senate. This would give him about two months to put together the summit with Kim Jong-un.
