North Korea has, so far, rebuffed President Biden’s diplomatic outreach efforts, according to the White House.
“To date, we have not received any response,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday, confirming the new administration has reached out to the secretive government in Pyongyang.
“This follows over a year without active dialogue with North Korea,” she noted, referring to the Trump administration’s loss of diplomatic contact with North Korea after former President Donald Trump twice met privately with Kim Jong Un.
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Biden’s administration contacted North Korea “through several channels starting in mid-February, including in New York,” in a bid to restart behind-the-scenes conversations aimed at reducing “the risks of escalation,” a senior official told Reuters last weekend. The official was referring to the North Korean mission at the United Nations in New York.
North Korea’s silence could complicate Biden’s concerted pivot to Asia, which has thus far focused on China. The president talked with the leaders of Australia, India, and Japan last week to discuss threats posed by the regional power ahead of the meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterparts on March 18 in Alaska.
But the United States’s strategic approach to North Korea will come under renewed scrutiny over the next month as the new administration wraps up its interagency review of the Trump administration’s policy in the region. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel to Japan and South Korea later this week as well.
Tensions are on the rise as North Korea builds its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, which it claimed in 2017 could reach the U.S. U.S. relations with the isolated country initially improved under Trump. But the relationship soured again after the pair failed to agree on nuclear disarmament or sanctions, cutting their Vietnamese summit short.
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During the campaign, Biden dismissed Kim as a “thug” while the rogue nation’s leader invested in long-range missiles, powerful warheads, surveillance satellites, and a nuclear-powered submarine.
