Thread: North Korea 'would hold talks' with Trump administration

North Korea 'would hold talks' with Trump administration

55 minutes ago
May 13, 2017

North Korea has said it will hold talks with the US "if the conditions were right", South Korean media reports.

A senior North Korean diplomat said dialogue with the Trump administration was possible following a meeting with ex-US government officials in Norway.

Earlier this month US President Donald Trump said he would be "honoured" to meet Kim Jong-un.

The comments follow months of rising tensions over North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear programme.

Choe Son-hui, an official in the North Korean foreign ministry responsible for North American affairs, told reporters in Beijing that bilateral talks between Pyongyang and Washington would be considered.
Media captionWhy does Trump admire strongmen leaders?

The BBC's Korea correspondent Stephen Evans says North Korea would probably have to agree to at least discuss relinquishing or limiting its nuclear weapons for the US to participate.

Ms Choe, who has been involved in nuclear negotiations in the past, made the comments during a stop-over on her return to Pyongyang following a meeting in Oslo.

Mr Trump has previously said that he would like to solve the North Korea crisis diplomatically, but that a "major, major conflict" is possible.

The country has engaged in several military shows of strength in recent weeks including missile tests.

The US has responded by sending warships to the region to install a controversial anti-missile system in South Korea.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39906459

This would be a great and historic event. I truly hope it happens. I think much good would come from it.

On first day in office, South Korean president talks about going to North


By Anna Fifield May 10

SEOUL — South Korea’s new president said Wednesday that he would be willing to hold talks in Washington and Pyongyang in efforts to ease the North Korean nuclear crisis, wasting no time in embarking on a new approach to dealing with Kim Jong Un’s regime.

The offer of shuttle diplomacy came shortly after Moon Jae-in was sworn in as president after winning a snap election triggered by the impeachment of conservative leader Park Geun-hye.

Moon had vowed on the campaign trail to resume engagement with North Korea, a sharp change from the hard-line approach taken by South Korea’s past two governments — and by the international community — in response to the North’s nuclear tests and missile launches.

“I will endeavor to address the security crisis promptly,” Moon said at the National Assembly in Seoul. “If needed, I will immediately fly to Washington. I will also visit Beijing and Tokyo and even Pyongyang under the right circumstances.”

Reinforcing his stance, Moon appointed two top aides with experience in dealing with North Korea.

He nominated Suh Hoon, a former intelligence official who arranged the two inter-Korean presidential summits held in the 2000s, to lead the National Intelligence Service.

Suh lived in North Korea for two years beginning in 1997 to run an energy project that was part of a 1994 denuclearization deal with North Korea. He met Kim Jong Il, the North’s leader at the time, during North-South summits in 2000 and 2007.

Moon also appointed as his chief of staff a former lawmaker who, as a student, went to North Korea to meet the state’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

Moon’s first words and actions as president show his determination to revive the South Korean “sunshine policy” of engaging North Korea rather than isolating it.

But this would put South Korea at odds with the United States, where President Trump has vowed to use “maximum pressure” to force the North to give up its nuclear weapons program, and with an international community that is largely supportive of tougher sanctions.

The sunshine policy was started in 1998 by Kim Dae-jung, a former pro-democracy activist who became South Korea’s first liberal president.

The policy got its name from an Aesop fable in which the wind and the sun compete to make a traveler take off his coat. The sun gently warms the traveler and succeeds, the moral of the fable being that gentle persuasion works better than force.

Kim Dae-jung engaged Pyongyang by laying the groundwork for a tourism project at a mountain on the North Korean side of the border that South Koreans were allowed to visit. After his summit with Kim Jong Il, families who were separated when the peninsula was divided were allowed to meet for reunions. Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts.

His successor, Roh Moo-hyun, continued the policy, opening a joint industrial park near the inter-Korean border where North Koreans would work in South Korean-owned factories, helping both sides. Roh went to Pyongyang for his own summit with Kim Jong Il near the end of his tenure in 2007.

Moon, who had started a law firm with Roh, served as his chief of staff in the presidential Blue House and was involved in North Korea policy during this time.

But the two conservative presidents who succeeded Kim and Roh abandoned the sunshine policy, instead promoting direct and multilateral sanctions to punish North Korea for its nuclear ambitions.

After North Korea’s fourth nuclear test last year, Park closed the joint industrial park, declaring that the money was going directly to the North Korean regime. In the 12 years that the complex was in operation, North Korea had made a total of about $560 million from the site, her government said.

During his campaign, Moon said he would seek to reopen the industrial park and tourism projects, and would be willing to meet Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang if necessary.

But reviving inter-Korean cooperation will be difficult, analysts say.

For starters, the world is a very different place now than it was in 1997.

Then, North Korea did not have a proven nuclear weapons program. Now, it has conducted five nuclear tests, and Kim Jong Un seems determined to develop missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads to the United States.

Plus, North Korean attacks on South Korea — including the sinking of the Cheonan naval corvette in 2010 and the shelling of a South Korean island, which together killed 50 people — have sapped South Korean goodwill toward the North.

Increasingly strict sanctions have been imposed through the United Nations in response to North Korea’s nuclear tests and missile launches, and both the United States and South Korea have imposed direct prohibitions on dealing with North Korea.

If South Korea were to say that special considerations apply on the peninsula, the Moon administration would “bring South Korea into immediate diplomatic conflict with the U.S. and undercut China’s already tepid willingness to implement sanctions,” Marcus Noland and Kent Boydston of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote in an analysis.

Even raising the specter of a sunshine-policy approach will complicate the international community’s efforts to make North Korea give up its nuclear program, said David Straub, a former State Department official who worked on North Korea.

“It’s a real challenge to the American-led effort to put maximum pressure on North Korea,” said Straub, who is now at the Sejong Institute, a think tank devoted to North Korea, outside Seoul.

Lee Jong-seok, who served as unification minister during the Roh administration, said a decade of sanctions has not worked. Moon realizes that pressure alone is not sufficient for resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and that the key is to pursue both dialogue and pressure, he said.

“President Moon will combine sanctions and dialogue, but which comes first will be decided after talking to relevant nations like the U.S. and China,” Lee said. “South Korea can’t unilaterally hold talks while everyone else is sanctioning North Korea.”

Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.4728231987ed

North Korea open to dialogue with US, if conditions are right

Updated 7 minutes ago
Kim Jong Un

A senior North Korean diplomat who handles relations with the United States has said Pyongyang would have dialogue with the US administration if conditions were right, South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported.

Key points

Trump has previously said 'major conflict' with N Korea possible
He later said he'd be honoured to meet Kim Jong-un under right conditions
N Korea has conducted five nuclear tests in defiance of UN/US sanctions

Choe Son Hui, North Korea's Foreign Ministry Director General for US affairs, made the comment to reporters in Beijing as she was travelling home from Norway, Yonhap said.

"We'll have dialogue if the conditions are there," she said.

When asked if North Korea was also preparing to talk with the new government in South Korea, of liberal President Moon Jae-in, Ms Choe said: "We'll see."

The comments by Ms Choe, who is a veteran member of the North's team of nuclear negotiators, came amid stepped-up international efforts to press North Korea and ease tension over its pursuit of nuclear arms.

US President Donald Trump warned in late April that a "major, major conflict" with the North was possible, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute over its nuclear and missile programs.

Mr Trump later said he would be "honoured" to meet the North's leader, Kim Jong-un, under the right conditions.
N Korean nuke could hit US

North Korea could have a 10-kiloton weapon capable of striking the US west coast and killing 100,000 people within four years, according to a former CIA officer.

Ms Choe was in Norway for so-called Track Two talks with former US government officials, according to Japanese media, the latest in a series of such meetings.

A source with knowledge of the latest meeting said at least one former US government official took part but the US administration was not involved.

South Korea's Moon, elected this week on a platform of a moderate approach to North Korea, has said he would be willing to go to Pyongyang under the right circumstances and said dialogue must be used in parallel with sanctions to resolve the problem over North Korea's weapons.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests in defiance of UN and US sanctions and is also developing long-range missiles to deliver atomic weapons.

It says it needs such weapons to defend itself against US aggression.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-1...-sates/8523954

Originally Posted by Judy

This would be a great and historic event. I truly hope it happens. I think much good would come from it.

That's just giving him the attention he seeks and thrives on. Giving him such attention will only act to embolden him. The man suffers from paranoia, extreme narcissism, and is a sociopath. IMO, his removal is the only rational outcome. Without him the citizenry of North Korea would be much better off and the world would be a much safer place. It is my position that a meeting between Kim Jung-un and Trump would be a waste of time. That is time that would be better utilized in figuring out how to crush his nuclear program, or better yet, removing him from his position of authority.

I completely disagree. I think building a relationship with North Korea is long overdue.

Originally Posted by Judy

I completely disagree. I think building a relationship with North Korea is long overdue.

We're both entitled to our own opinion on this.

Of course. I would just point out that your position is the one that the US government has practiced for the past 65 years that has sadly led to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula that can reach the United States.

Originally Posted by Judy

Of course. I would just point out that your position is the one that the US government has practiced for the past 65 years that has sadly led to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula that can reach the United States.

You are obviously misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not talking about a few worthless sanctions. North Korea has been threating us and South Korea for years and the time has come to act decisively to end their nuclear capabilities.

North Korea launches a new unidentified missile as tensions with US fester

14 Mins Ago Reuters
May 13, 2017

North Korea fired on Sunday an unidentified projectile from a region near its west coast, South
Korea's military said, a development that was confirmed by U.S. officials.

The nature of the projectile is not immediately clear, a South Korean military official said by telephone.

Yonhap news agency reported the projectile launched appeared to be a ballistic missile. Three U.S. officials also confirmed to NBC News the country launched a projectile.

The launch took place at a region named Kusong located northwest of the capital, Pyongyang, where the North previously test-launched its intermediate-range missile it is believed to be developing.

The launch, if it is confirmed to be test-firing of a ballistic missile, is the first in two weeks since the last attempt to fire a missile ended in a failure just minutes into flight.

The North attempted but failed to test-launch ballistic missiles four consecutive times in the past two months but has conducted a variety of missile testing since the beginning of last year at an unprecedented pace.

Weapons experts and government officials believe the North has accomplished some technical progress with those tests.

President Donald Trump warned in an interview with Reuters in late April that a "major, major conflict" with the North was possible, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute over its nuclear and missile programs.

The launch is the first since a new liberal president took office in South Korea on Wednesday saying dialogue as well as pressure must be used to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and stop the North's weapons pursuit.

--NBC News contributed to this article.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/13/north...s-with-us.html