SEOUL – Upon finishing its first high-level diplomatic trip through Asia on Thursday, the Biden government is betting on international alliances in the region to help contain the growing threat posed by North Korea’s ballistic missiles and nuclear capabilities.
But the country that is perhaps best placed to influence Pyongyang is one that President Biden has increasingly seen as an opponent: China.
After meetings this week in South Korea and Japan, the government is faced with a diplomatic stalemate of the kind that angered former President Barack Obama and led former President Donald J. Trump to declare his love for Kim Jong-un , the leader of North Korea, on a manic impulse, but frustrated by a discovery.
North Korea continues to develop its weapons systems, and international officials have said that its repressive internal policies, involving surveillance, torture and prison camps, constitute human rights violations. The recent attempts by the Biden government to open a line of communication have been rejected by North Korea, leaving it to appeal to its partners in the region to help exert pressure against Pyongyang.
“With respect to North Korea, the most important outreach and engagement we are doing is with our partners and allies. That is a big part of why we are here, ”Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters after talks in Seoul on Thursday with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and foreign and foreign affairs ministers. Defense of South Korea.
He said the Biden government is closely consulting with the governments of South Korea, Japan and other allied nations “who are concerned about North Korea’s actions and activities”.
But China is North Korea’s main financial and political benefactor, and Blinken acknowledged that Beijing “has a critical role to play” in any diplomatic effort with Pyongyang. He suggested that China was also concerned about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
“China has a real interest in helping to deal with this,” said Blinken. “Therefore, we expect Beijing to play a role in advancing what, I think, is in everyone’s interest.”
If the United States can recruit Beijing to participate, it will become clearer after negotiations on Thursday and Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, when China’s top two diplomats meet with Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. American officials classified the talks as a direct exchange of political views.
How to contain North Korea will be among the issues discussed in Anchorage. It is one of the few areas where American officials believe they can cooperate with China while the Biden government continues to face Beijing’s military expansionism, its crackdown on democracy and its economic coercion in the Indo-Pacific region.
Blinken had previously described China as “America’s greatest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” and the Biden government issued harsh warnings and financial sanctions against Beijing, including on Wednesday, in response to some of its actions.
“It is reasonable to try to get support from China, given its political and economic relationship with North Korea and its overall weight in the region,” said Frank Aum, a North Korean expert at the US Peace Institute in Washington.
But Aum also noted that China has no control over a series of demands that North Korea has made in exchange for disarmament, including lifting US sanctions and ending joint US-South Korea military exercises.
South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in is looking forward to the United States resuming diplomatic discussions with North Korea and other regional powers. He has repeatedly argued that a Korean peninsula without nuclear weapons is possible, insisting that Kim is willing to give up his weapons and focus on economic growth if Washington provides the right incentives.
After meeting with US envoys, South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said he hoped for a “quick resumption of dialogue” between the United States and North Korea, and that the Seoul government would continue to support Washington’s efforts to establish a diplomatic system in contact with Pyongyang.
He also suggested that Mr. Trump’s direct diplomatic approach provided “basic principles” on how to achieve denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“Our experience over the past three years has proven that if North Korea is persistently engaged on the basis of close cooperation between South Korea and the United States, it is possible to solve the nuclear problem,” said Chung.
More than a year has passed since North Korea spoke directly to US officials, Blinken said in Tokyo. And the meetings in Seoul this week were the first between South Korean foreign and defense ministers and their American counterparts in five years.
Mr. Moon’s political action soared when he helped bring Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim together for two summits. But after the second, in 2019, ended abruptly without an agreement on easing U.S. sanctions or the pace of North Korean disarmament, Moon struggled to regain its relevance in the negotiations. Last June, North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, the first in a series of actions that threatened to reverse a fragile detente.
North Korean officials will reject Washington’s attempts to establish a dialogue “unless the United States reverses its hostile policy,” said Choe Son-hui, the country’s first deputy foreign minister, on Thursday. “Therefore, we will also disregard such an attempt by the United States in the future.”
Ms. Choe cited military exercises the United States conducted with South Korea and spoke in Washington about imposing more sanctions on the North as examples of this hostility. In a diatribe issued hours after senior US envoys landed in Tokyo earlier this week, North Korea warned the Biden government to “refrain from causing a bad smell”.
North Korea has not conducted any weapons tests since it launched short-range missiles in March last year. But during a military parade in October, it unveiled a new untested intercontinental ballistic missile that looked bigger and more powerful than the ICBM tested in late 2017, before Kim started diplomacy with Trump.
At a party meeting in January, Kim promised to further advance his country’s nuclear capabilities, declaring that he would build new solid-fuel ICBMs and make his nuclear warheads lighter and more accurate.
Pyongyang was closely following this week’s trips from Blinken and Austin to Tokyo and Seoul for clues about the Biden government’s approach. North Korea is expected to decide after watching Washington resume arms testing and create a new cycle of tensions to gain an advantage.
Blinken said the American stance on North Korea would include a mix of regional pressure options and the potential for future diplomacy when the current review of the Biden government’s policy is completed next month.
Mr. Aum, North Korea’s expert at the U.S. Peace Institute, said the policy could include getting China to do more to control North Korea, potentially deploying additional weapon systems in the region or conducting military exercises bigger with South Korea – both would irritate Beijing.
China has widely urged North Korea and the United States to resolve the impasse alone, although it has called for sanctions to be eased and a pause in US military exercises with Seoul in exchange for Pyongyang to freeze its nuclear and missile tests.
“All parties must work together to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” said a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, this week. “China will continue to play a constructive role in this process.”
Steven Lee Myers and John Ismay contributed reporting from Seoul.