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North Korea summit: Trump says Kim aide on way to New York North Korea summit: Trump says Kim aide on way to New York
(35 minutes later)
A top aide to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, was on his way to the US on Tuesday, Donald Trump said in a tweet. North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator and former spy chief is due to arrive in New York on Wednesday for talks aimed at salvaging a June summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.
Another key aide to Kim arrived in Singapore on Monday night, a Japanese broadcaster said, adding weight to indications a planned summit with Trump will go ahead. Kim Yong-chol, a veteran of the regime in Pyongyang who will be the most senior North Korean official to visit the US in 18 years, will hold talks with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, following a flurry of diplomatic activity over the weekend.
Kim Chang-son, Kim’s de facto chief of staff, flew to Singapore via Beijing, the report by public broadcaster NHK said. South Korea’s Yohnap news agency reported that Kim Yong-chol, a former North Korean spy chief and senior official, was headed to the US after stopping over in Beijing. The 72-year-old general, the vice-chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party who has served three generations of the Kim dynasty, stopped in Beijing on Tuesday night, where he was reported to have held talks with Chinese officials before his onward flight.
Trump appeared to confirm that in a tweet on Tuesday morning, sent in the middle of a sequence of complaints about the Russia investigation. Trump confirmed the general was on his way in a tweet on Tuesday morning, after South Korean media reported that he was on a passenger list for a Wednesday flight from Beijing to New York.
“We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea,” the US president wrote. “Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young [sic] Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!” The president described the impending visit as a “solid response” to his letter to the North Korean leader on Thursday cancelling their planned summit on 12 June, blaming a bellicose statement from North Korean officials.
Kim Yong-chol is vice-chairman of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee. Trump’s reference to a letter was to his cancellation of the summit last Thursday. US officials had also said that the North Koreans had failed to show up for a planning meeting and did not answer their phones for several days last week. Trump has since claimed that the summit could take place on schedule.
A team of US officials including Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, left the Yokota airbase in Japan for Singapore on Monday, NHK said. The White House said a “pre-advance” team was travelling to meet North Koreans. We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!
It said Trump and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, talked on the phone on Monday and confirmed they would meet before the “expected” US-North Korea summit. Trump and Abe “affirmed the shared imperative of achieving the complete and permanent dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and ballistic missile programmes,” the White House said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration had indefinitely delayed sanctions on North Korea which had been due to take effect on Tuesday, in a bid to improve the conditions for a summit.
The historic summit was initially scheduled for 12 June but Trump called it off last week. A day later, he said he had reconsidered and officials from both countries met to work out details. Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday: “Since the President’s 24 May letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the North Koreans have been engaging. The United States continues to actively prepare for President Trump’s expected summit with leader Kim in Singapore.”
When Kim Chang-son was asked by a reporter at Beijing airport if he was flying to Singapore for talks with the US, he said he was “going there to play”, according to footage from Nippon Television Network. Sanders said Trump would meet Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on 7 June at the White House in the run-up to a G7 summit in Quebec and the planned summit with Kim.
On Saturday, Kim Jong-un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in held a surprise meeting at the border village of Panmunjom, during which they agreed the North Korea-US summit must be held. South Korean officials have said Moon may travel to Singapore during the meeting, but that his attendance is dependent on preliminary meetings between the US and North Korea. A team of US negotiators, headed by Washington’s current ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, met North Korean officials in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas, on Sunday, and are due to have further meetings there over the course of this week, according to Sanders.
On Sunday, the state department said US and North Korean officials had met at Panmunjom. Sung Kim, a former US ambassador to South Korea and current ambassador to the Philippines, led the American delegation, a US official told Reuters. She said a separate team of White House officials, led by deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, was in Singapore, “coordinating logistics for the expected summit”. According to the Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, Kim Chang-son, the de facto chief of staff to the North Korean leader, had also flown to Singapore for the talks.
Moon said on Monday there could be more impromptu talks between the two Koreas in the lead-up to the summit. While the Singapore meetings are about logistics, the DMZ talks are about the substance of the talks, and the challenge of bridging a yawning gap between the two parties’ negotiating positions. Trump and top US officials have hitherto insisted that North Korea unilaterally and completely dismantles its nuclear weapons programme, handing over warheads, fissile material and related equipment to the US, before receiving any reciprocal benefits. Pyongyang has rejected unilateral disarmament. It sees denuclearisation as a phased and mutual process.
In Kim and Moon’s first meeting on 27 April, they agreed to seek the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula – but did not define what that meant, or how that would proceed. Since then, North Korea has rejected US demands for it to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons. Analysts believe Washington is trying to determine whether North Korea is willing to agree on sufficient steps towards denuclearisation to allow a summit to take place. The last member of the North Korean leadership to visit the US was vice-marshal Jo Myong-rok, who went to California and then Washington for a White House meeting with Bill Clinton in October 2000. The two governments came close to a summit meeting and a disarmament agreement, but the plans were derailed by the US presidential election the following month, narrowly won by George W Bush, who cut off all contacts with Pyongyang.
North Korea defends the existence of its nuclear and missile programmes by saying they are a deterrent against perceived aggression by the US, which keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean war which ended without a peace treaty in 1953. A state department report on religious freedom around the world published on Tuesday estimated that 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners are in detention camps in North Korea, under “horrific conditions” in remote areas.
Pyongyang had long said it would be open to giving up its nuclear arsenal if the US withdrew its troops from South Korea and ended its “nuclear umbrella” alliance with Seoul. Sam Brownback, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said: “What we know is that you’ve got a gulag system operating in North Korea, and it’s been a terrible situation for many – for many years. You can go on satellite, open-source satellite, and see some of these camps and the situation.”
Asked if human rights would come up in a Trump-Kim summit, Brownback replied: “The president is right on point on North Korea. He’s very engaged on this, as you know. The secretary [Pompeo] is very engaged on this. And I think they’re raising all of these issues.”
North KoreaNorth Korea
South KoreaSouth Korea
Nuclear weaponsNuclear weapons
Asia PacificAsia Pacific
Donald TrumpDonald Trump
US national securityUS national security
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