South Korea is urging the U.S. and North Korea to compromise with each other more quickly in order to secure a deal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
“We are asking North Korea to speed up its denuclearization process,” Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for President Moon Jae-in, told reporters. “And to the U.S., we are asking that it show sincere efforts about corresponding measures that North Korea is demanding.”
The question of when North Korea receives benefits, in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program, is central to the negotiating process that was formally launched after President Trump met face to face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump’s team has vowed not to repeat the mistakes of past administrations, which provided economic relief only to see the regime break its promises. But North Korea — with Chinese and Russian backing — has renewed demands for the U.S. to offer concessions in the name of trust-building.
“It is essential for both sides to take simultaneous actions and phased steps to do what is possible one after another,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Saturday. “Only when the U.S. ensures that we feel comfortable with and come close to it, will we be able to open our minds to the U.S.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has ruled out such steps as a premature relaxation of economic pressure, though he seemed to acknowledge that talks about what the U.S. could do to mollify the North Koreans are under way, short of lifting any economic sanctions.
“I’m not going to comment on the negotiations and what others may have proffered or what we have considered,” he told reporters while traveling over the weekend. “Just not appropriate. Wouldn’t be fair to them or to us as we try and solve this.”
North Korea is already in violation of international sanctions on the importation of oil, according to U.S. officials who estimate that Russia and China are providing the regime with more oil than permissible under a United Nations Security Council resolution that passed in December. But the two countries put a hold on western efforts to impose a total oil embargo in response to the breach, while Russian officials are beginning to blame the United States for an expected breakdown in the negotiations.
“North Korea has done a lot, which no one expected,” said Georgy Toloraya, director of the Russian Strategy for Asia Center of the Institute of Economics at Russia’s Academy of Sciences, in an interview with state-run media outlet TASS.
“At the same time, the United States has done nearly nothing,” he added. ”North Koreans must find contradictions between the head of state’s instructions and the steps taken by the State Department and Defense Department rather strange. Pyongyang may soon lose hope that it is possible to deal with the U.S. at all.”
Toloraya’s comments echoed Ri’s claim Saturday that Pompeo’s position is “far from [Trump’s] intention” as expressed during the Singapore summit.
Trump’s team has applauded North Korea’s return of the remains of U.S. war dead, as well as the apparent steps to dismantle part of a missile factory. But Pompeo and other U.S. officials also believe that North Korea is continuing to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles; satellite imagery also shows upgrades at a key site.
“The sanctions must remain in place until we’re done … no matter how much progress we make along the way,” Pompeo said during a Friday interview. “There will surely be things along the way that take place. We’ve already had meetings. We are engaged in things which will improve the trust between our two countries. Those all make sense. But with respect to sanctions, the U.N. has spoken, the world has spoken.”
