US President Joe Biden’s administration says it has been trying to contact the North Korean government since February but has yet to receive a response.
Washington had tried to reach Pyongyang in several different ways to prevent tensions escalating, officials said.
The US and North Korea remain at loggerheads over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Three meetings between Mr Biden’s predecessor and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un achieved little.
The talks failed to persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons – a key demand of the US and other Western powers.
North Korean state media has yet to acknowledge that Joe Biden is now the American president.
Donald Trump has become the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea, after meeting Kim Jong-un in the area dividing the two Koreas.
Mr Trump and the North Korean leader posed for handshakes before talking for nearly an hour in the heavily fortified demilitarised zone (DMZ).
Both countries agreed to set up teams to resume stalled nuclear talks.
Their last summit broke down in February with no progress on denuclearisation in North Korea.
Critics have dismissed the occasion – the two leaders’ third face-to-face encounter in just over a year – as a political theatre and say North Korea still needs to show that it is serious in getting rid of its nuclear weapons.
I completely agree that it was theater and that NK needs to demonstrate its sincerity. I disagree that the encounter was meaningless. Symbols and images can be very powerful. Certainly, the evil butterball (as Jay Weber calls Jong-un) is susceptible to it. So we’ll see… maybe this is another step toward peace. Maybe it is one more in a decades-long series of false starts.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the execution of several top officials in March after they were unable to reach an agreement with President Trump at a second summit between the two leaders earlier this year.
Bloomberg News reported Thursday citing a South Korean newspaper that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s special envoy to the U.S., was executed in March along with four other North Korean foreign ministry officials involved in the Hanoi, Vietnam, summit.
President Donald Trump landed back in Washington after the sudden collapse of his nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un – after saying in an interview he appreciates that North Korea spent ‘a lot of time’ building up its nuclear arsenal.
In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, conducted in Hanoi before Trump told the world why he failed to reach a deal with the North Korean dictator, Trump said he and Kim did not see eye to eye on what North Korea would have to give up for sanctions relief.
‘Well, they wanted to denuke certain areas and I wanted everything,’ Trump told Hannity.
‘And the sanctions are there and I didn’t want to give up the sanctions unless we had a real program. And they’re not ready for that and I understand that fully, I really do. I mean, they spent a lot of time building it and that doesn’t mean the world has to be happy,’ Trump said.
Well, I was hopeful that there was progress. Perhaps not. I am, however, skeptical of “unnamed US officials.”
North Korea appears to be building new ballistic missiles despite recent warming ties with the Trump administration and pledges to denuclearise, reports say.
The US hopes to see “major disarmament” by North Korea by the end of 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says.
His comments come a day after an unprecedented meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.
In a statement North Korea agreed to work towards “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”.
But the document has been criticised for lacking details on when or how Pyongyang would give up its weapons.
Speaking in South Korea, where he discussed the outcome of the summit, Secretary Pompeo said there was still “a great deal of work to do” with North Korea.
But he added: “Major disarmament… We’re hopeful that we can achieve that in the two and half years.”
As I’ve continued to say, I have much hope, but low expectations. We’ve never made it this far down the aisle before, but that doesn’t mean we’re married yet.
Kim was scheduled to meet with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Sunday evening, a meeting which will be streamed on the prime minister’s Facebook page.
Trump is expected to arrive sometime around 8 p.m. local time. Singapore is 12 hours ahead of the United States’ Eastern time zone.
The president left for Singapore straight from a brief visit to the G-7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada on Saturday. Air Force One left around noon and make a quick stopover in Greece to refuel Saturday night.
The U.S. administration officials included on the trip are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, Deputy National Security Adviser Mira Ricardel, National Security Council-Asia Director Matt Pottinger, senior adviser Steven Miller, press secretary Sarah Sanders and NSC communications official Sarah Tinsley.
This looks like Kim rattling his saber to enhance his perceived bargaining position before the summit. But it could also be the whole thing falling apart.
North Korea has said it may pull out of a summit with US President Donald Trump if the US insists it gives up its nuclear weapons.
The highly anticipated meeting between Mr Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is due to take place on 12 June.
But in an angry statement, North Korea’s vice-foreign minister accused the US of making reckless statements and of harbouring sinister intentions.
“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th,” Trump tweeted. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”
The summit, which has been in the works since Trump accepted Kim’s invitation to meet in March, will be the first ever meeting between a sitting US president and North Korean leader.
US officials had also considered holding the summit at the Korean demilitarized zone or in Mongolia, but ultimately settled on the city-state of Singapore as the location.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that three American prisoners released from North Korea were headed home, a sign of potential good will ahead of Trump’s planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In a tweet, Trump said “the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting” were accompanying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on his way back from a visit to North Korea.
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online. You have to give props when props are due. Here you go:
In West Bend last weekend, there was a brat fry for the benefit of veterans of the Korean War. More than 5.7 million Americans served in the Korean War — 33,739 were killed in battle. Another 20,507 died in service during the war and 103,284 were wounded. Today, less than half of the Americans who served in the Korean War are still alive.
Given that it has been almost 65 years since that bloody war ground to a halt in a cease fire agreement, many of those Korean War veterans had likely given up hope of ever seeing the war actually end. Last week, Kim Jong Un, the grandson of North Korean tyrant Kim Il Sung, who launched the bloody war in 1950, shook hands with South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, and then stepped into South Korea to begin a historic summit that may lead to a lasting peace between the sibling nations.
That handshake did not come about by accident. It was the result of a multifaceted foreign policy effort by President Donald Trump. For all of his faults, Trump’s foreign policy has proven to be sophisticated and effective. He has advanced the interests of peace on the Korean peninsula further than any of his predecessors.
The likelihood of a lasting peace, much less the complete denuclearization of North Korea, is still slim. Kim Jong Un is a third generation dictator who is equal parts evil and crazy. His interests are rooted in his own power — not the welfare of the North Korean people or the world. In order for peace to be sustainable, Kim’s self-interest will have to be appeased and Trump will have to twist Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim to, “don’t trust and verify.”
Still, we are closer to peace than we have been for three generations and the world has Trump to thank for that. The secret to Trump’s foreign policy is no secret at all. He has returned to the more muscular foreign policy of “peace through strength” that underpinned the foreign policy of many previous administrations.
The first thing Trump did when entering office was make it clear that the days of American appeasement of North Korea were over. Strong, occasionally reckless, rhetoric sent the message that Trump was not of the same mold as his most recent predecessors.
Then Trump backed up his rhetoric with very stiff sanctions against North Korea. While North Korea is no stranger to sanctions, this time it was different. Through a combination of threats and praise, Trump convinced China to get on board with the sanctions. China is North Korea’s largest trading partner, by far, and ally in the Korean War.
Once the sanctions were in place, Trump extended his potent mix of threats and complimentary gestures to Kim. Trump began working toward high level negotiations and backed it up by sending the soon-tobe Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to meet Kim. In the bast couple of weeks, Kim has committed to cease nuclear tests, dismantle a nuclear facility, met with South Korean President Moon, and indicated that he wants a permanent peace. Trump is tentatively scheduled to meet with Kim next month.
Incidentally, while Pompeo was furthering the peace process in North Korea through diplomacy as the secretary of state nominee, Wisconsin’s Sen. Tammy Baldwin voted against his confirmation saying that she feared Pompeo would not be diplomatic enough.
Underlying the entire process is the fact that nobody doubts that Trump is willing to back up his threats. No doubt the strikes by the United States against chemical weapons facilities in Syria, despite the admonitions of the Russians and Assad, got Kim’s attention. If Trump is willing and able to act with such precision against Syria, there is no doubt that he would be able to strike North Korea. And with China softening its defense of Kim in order to protect its economic interests, Kim is more isolated than ever.
The North Korean problem has been the world’s Gordian Knot for more than half a century. Trump might be about to cut it.
Good news. Again, with all of the requisite caveats about how this probably won’t stick.
Seoul (CNN)North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will shut down his nuclear test site in May and invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States into the country to ensure “transparency” around its closure, South Korea’s presidential office said Sunday.
It is the latest breakthrough on the peninsula ahead of a meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump, who said Saturday that talks could take place within “three to four weeks.”
A senior spokesman for South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Kim made the comments during a landmark summit Friday at the demilitarized zone between the two countries, when Kim became the first North Korean leader to step into South Korean territory since fighting ended in the Korean War in 1953.
Kim told Moon during the summit that he had no intention of targeting the US or the South with nuclear weapons, the South Korean President’s office said Sunday.
The Forgotten War, which became the Forgotten Peace, is about to formally end. Thank God.
Ilsan, South Korea (CNN)Leaders of the two Koreas have agreed to end the Korean War, 65 years after hostilities ceased, in a wide-ranging joint announcement struck Friday, that includes working towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
But the announcement, which largely steered clear of specifics regarding Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities, faces major hurdles before any peace deal can be reached, which must also involve China and the US, both of whom were participants in the original conflict.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, signed the “Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula,” at the demilitarized zone (DMZ), after an historic day of meetings, including a 30-minute private conversation the contents of which are unknown.
In separate speeches they promised a new era for the Korean Peninsula. Addressing the world’s media, Kim said the Koreas “will be reunited as one country.”
Of course, it could all fall apart, but we haven’t made it this far… ever. This is a direct result of Trump’s foreign policy of pressuring China, standing firm (do you think that missile strike in Syria got Kim’s attention?), and openness about the conditions under which North Korea could be welcomed into the international community. Let’s hope we see an actual peace treaty in the coming months – and that Kim abides by it.
Around 2,000 journalists are gathered at a media center in Ilsan, South Korea to cover the summit.
The room was tense as the journalists massed inside the Kintex Conference Center waited for their first sight of Kim Jong Un.
An audible gasp ran through the room as Kim walked down the steps towards the military demarcation line, followed by a loud cheers and applause from South Koreans in the room as the historic handshake took place and Kim stepped onto the south side.
I don’t trust Kim at all, but this is the most progress we’ve seen in many, many years…. like… ever.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said he will suspend all missile tests and shut down a nuclear test site with immediate effect.
“From 21 April, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles,” the Korean Central News Agency said.
The decision is aimed at pursuing economic growth and peace on the Korean peninsular, state media report.
Mr Kim is due to meet his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in next week.
He is also expected to hold an unprecedented summit with US President Donald Trump by June. If it takes place, it will be the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.
[…]
A spokesperson for the South Korean president called the North’s move “meaningful progress”.
(CNN)North Korea has dropped its long-held demand that the United States withdraw forces from South Korea in exchange for denuclearization, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Thursday.
The United States has about 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea, a presence that has long irked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
However, in the burgeoning spirit of openness and diplomacy, Moon said Kim is willing to give up US troops’ removal as a precondition for discussions over denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
“North Korea has expressed willingness to give up its nuclear program without making (a) demand that the (US Forces Korea) forces withdraw from the Korean Peninsula,” Moon said in a meeting with the press, adding that any proposed troop withdrawal would be a “condition that the US cannot accept.”
I still give the prospect of a permanent agreement a probability of about 10% – mainly because Kim is crazy – but this is the most significant diplomatic engagement with North Korea since Clinton gave them nukes.
CIA director Mike Pompeo travelled to Pyongyang for a secret meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, US President Donald Trump has confirmed.
A “good relationship” was formed at the meeting last week, Mr Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
News of the visit first emerged on Tuesday. US officials were quoted as saying the aim was to prepare a summit between Mr Trump and Mr Kim.
Mr Trump had earlier alluded to high-level direct talks with Pyongyang.
But the unexpected and clandestine meeting marks the highest level US contact with North Korea since 2000.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has invited Donald Trump to meet him, an invitation the US leader has said he will accept.
The shock announcement was made by senior South Korean officials in Washington, who passed on a letter from the North Korean leader.
They said Mr Kim had also agreed to halt nuclear and missile tests and was “committed to denuclearisation”.
It appears to be a major breakthrough after months of threats and violence.
The South Korean delegation had held unprecedented talks with Mr Kim in Pyongyang earlier this week, part of a diplomatic thaw following the Winter Olympics in South Korea, then travelled to the US to pass on their message.
Mr Trump, who has previously said there is no point in talking to North Korea, said the development was “great progress”.
But he said sanctions will remain in place until a firm agreement is reached.
The problem with North Korea is that they are liar liars who lie. The emphasis must be on “verify.”
North Korea was behind the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack in May that spread around the world costing billions of dollars, White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday.
In the article, entitled, “It’s Official: North Korea Is Behind WannaCry,” Bossert wrote that the Hermit Kingdom was the main culprit behind the May 2017 global cyberattack in which computers running Windows were targeted. During the infamous attack, data were encrypted and ransom payment, in the form of bitcoin, was demanded of users if they wanted their data back.
“Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another,” Bossert’s op-ed read. “They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive ‘WannaCry’ cyber attack to North Korea.”
