Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will return to North Korea next week for a new round of negotiations to dismantle dictator Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons program, he announced Thursday, and he’ll be bringing a new diplomat devoted to the talks.
Pompeo tapped Steve Beguin, the vice president of international affairs for Ford Motor Co., as the special representative for North Korea. The position has been vacant since the retirement of Ambassador Joseph Yun in February, while Pompeo has played the leading role in talks with the Kim regime.
.@SecPompeo announces Steve Biegun as the Special Representative for #NorthKorea, who will lead our efforts to achieve @POTUS Trump’s goal of the final, fully-verified denuclearization of North Korea, as agreed to by Chairman Kim Jong Un. pic.twitter.com/fZ9iCBMhpL
— Department of State (@StateDept) August 23, 2018
In addition to his international work for Ford, Beguin worked for the National Security Council under George W. Bush and as a foreign policy adviser for a variety of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“I’m fully confident that he will be able to lead our mission in assuring a secure future for the American people and we hope a far brighter future for the people of North Korea,” Pompeo said while introducing Beguin at the State Department.
Beguin arrives at the department as the administration escalates efforts to enforce international sanctions on the regime by blacklisting a series of Russian entities that have helped North Korea circumvent oil sanctions. The imposition of sanctions on a pair of Russian shipping companies came after Russia and China put a hold on a U.S. analysis that North Korea has imported more oil than permissible under UN sanctions.
“The best way we can support those talks is to not loosen the sanctions,” Ambassador Nikki Haley, the U.S. representative at the United Nations, told reporters in July. “The problem that we are encountering is that some of our friends have decided that they want to go around the rules.”
North Korea is demanding economic concessions, however, in a step-by-step exchange for any progress on denuclearization — a process that Russia and China support, but that U.S. officials believe would end once again with North Korea breaking its denuclearization pledges once the economic pressure eased.
“The issues are tough, and they will be tough to resolve,” Beguin said Thursday. “But the president has created an opening, and its one that we must take by seizing every possible opportunity to realize the vision for a peaceful future for the people of North Korea. This begins with the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea as agreed by Chairman Kim Jong-un at the summit with President Trump in Singapore.”
