North Korea wasted chance to improve relations under Trump, US envoy says

(1) North Korea Study Group



North Korea wasted chance to improve relations under Trump, US envoy says
US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, who has led denuclearisation talks with Pyongyang, admitted the process had 'yet to deliver the success we hoped for'. 

(Photo: AFP/PETRAS MALUKAS)
10 Dec 2020 







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SEOUL: Pyongyang squandered an opportunity to fundamentally reinvent its relationship with the United States during Donald Trump's presidency, Washington's top North Korea envoy said on Thursday (Dec 10), adding he will urge his successors to continue engagement.

Speaking to a think tank in Seoul during a visit to meet with South Korean security officials, US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun admitted he was disappointed denuclearisation negotiations had stalled and that more progress was not made during his time leading those efforts.

"Regrettably, much opportunity has been squandered by our North Korean counterparts over the past two years, who too often have devoted themselves to the search for obstacles to negotiations instead of seizing opportunities for engagement," he said, according to his prepared remarks.

READ: US targets shipping lines over North Korean coal

Still, he defended Trump's decision to focus on top-level diplomacy with leader Kim Jong Un, and to eschew small steps in favour of seeking a major agreement under which North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons and the two sides would normalise relations.

READ: Commentary: Even North Korea and Kim Jong Un have found this an odd year

"This vision was a bold one, and it made the many advocates of incrementalism uncomfortable," Biegun said.

After trading insults and nuclear threats that had pushed their countries to the brink of war, Trump and Kim met for the first time in Singapore in 2018, where they signed a general declaration calling for denuclearisation and new relations between the two old adversaries.

After working-level talks Biegun helped lead, the two leaders held their second meeting in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in 2019 but failed to reach a deal.

READ: Commentary: North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons

Subsequent talks failed to make progress and Pyongyang has rebuffed Biegun's calls for more engagement, saying the US does not appear serious about dropping its hostile policies.

Biegun called for North Korea to resume talks in the coming months.

With Democratic president-elect Joe Biden due to replace Trump in January, Biegun said he had a message for the incoming team: "The war is over; the time for conflict has ended, and the time for peace has arrived."

Source: Reuters/kv

Charles Park shared a link.

11h

Biegun's job was to waste time. His job was to lend false hope. He was there to present a handsome cherubic nice guy face.

North Koreans couldn't accept CVID, the impossible demand. They aren't the fools the US wants then to be.

It's the US which has squandered the opportunity (the past 30 years) for a nuclear free Korean Peninsula.

All North Korea has to do is to learn to prosper under sanctions: To be North Korea and still be rich, which is not impossible.

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4 comments

Anita Sjögren The US demanded total denuclearization - did they even believe it would work? Should have been more sensitive to NK's need for security.

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Charles Park

Charles Park Working the logics backwards: You disarm first, then we'll give you peace. Hasn't worked for 30 years. This failure has costs and that is that NK is now a nuclear power with ICBMs.

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Leonid Petrov

Leonid Petrov Donald Trump's unconventional relations with Kim Jung Un, that first included the threats of fury and fire but later resulted in three summits, failed to resolve the nuclear problem because everyone in the region, including the US and DPRK, prefer the conflict in Northeast Asia to continue. The frozen Korean War justifies the presence of US troops in Korea and Japan, as much as it gives Kim Jong Un a free hand in keeping his kingdom mobilised and isolated. Changing the status quo in Korea would have triggered significant regional changes that nobody is ready to tolerate or support. One term in office was enough for Trump to persuade Kim to stop nuclear tests and rocket launches in exchange for the halted ROK-US joint military exercises, but they could hardly offer to each other anything more than that without breaking the balance of threat and disappointing their regional allies.

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Charles Park

Charles Park Sure both have contributed to the perpetuation of the Korean War. But you know, North Korea has been asking for peace since the early 1970s.

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