SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Newly arrived in Tokyo, President Joe Biden’s chief diplomat and chief of defense traveled to South Korea on Wednesday, the day after North Korea made a point of calling the attention of the United States, warning the United States to “avoid causing a bad smell” amid a stalemate in nuclear negotiations.
How to get North Korea back to negotiations will be the main focus when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meet with South Korean officials this week.
More than two years have passed since nuclear negotiations stalled, and some experts say the United States and its allies should reach an agreement that would freeze North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for relaxing sanctions – and possibly leave weapons behind. Pyongyang nuclear power plants already in place.
Austin and Blinken will meet with their South Korean colleagues for separate talks on Wednesday and a joint “two plus two” meeting on Thursday, the first contact between the two countries in five years.
South Korea is the second leg of its regional journey with the aim of boosting America’s Asian alliances to better deal with the growing challenges of China and North Korea. While in Tokyo on Tuesday, they joined forces with Japanese officials to criticize China’s “coercion and aggression” and to reaffirm their commitment to rid North Korea of all its nuclear bombs.
U.S.-led diplomacy on the latter topic has been in limbo since a February 2019 summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed due to U.S.-led sanctions disputes. Kim has since threatened to increase his nuclear arsenal in protest at what he called US hostility.
On Tuesday, Kim’s sister and a senior officer on her own merits, Kim Yo Jong, criticized the United States for its regular military training with South Korea, which North Korea sees as an invasion rehearsal. .
“We take this opportunity to alert the new US administration,” said Kim Yo Jong in a statement. “If he wants to sleep in peace for the next four years, it is better not to cause a stink in the first stage.”
Some experts say Kim Yo Jong’s statement is a pressure tactic and that Pyongyang may try to further increase animosities with weapons testing to increase its influence in future negotiations with Washington.
Asked about Kim Yo Jong’s statement during a press conference in Tokyo, Blinken said he was familiar with the comments and was more interested in listening to his allies and partners.
Blinken said Washington had contacted North Korea through various channels since mid-February, but received no response. He said the Biden government is eager to complete its policy review for North Korea in the coming weeks and is looking at possible “additional pressure measures” and “diplomatic paths”.
Shim Beomchul, an analyst at the Korean National Strategy Research Institute based in Seoul, said he hoped the Biden government would seek an agreement with North Korea that resembles a 2015 agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. While the United States is unlikely to give up on its long-term commitment to denuclearizing North Korea, reducing the country’s nuclear capabilities to zero is not a realistic short-term diplomatic goal, he said.
Trump blew up that 2015 Obama administration deal in favor of what he called maximum pressure against Iran, and the Biden government is trying to resurrect him.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2018, Blinken, then managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, argued that the best deal the United States could reach with North Korea “will most likely look like what Barack Obama has achieved with Iran ”. He said an interim agreement “would buy time to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement, including a thoroughly sequenced roadmap that will require sustained diplomacy. That was the approach that Obama took with Iran ”.
Other experts say an Iran-style deal will not work for North Korea. Iran has not built a bomb, but North Korea has already produced dozens. They say North Korea, which has a history of derailed deals with its vehement rejection of verification processes, will find no reason to denuclearize when some of the most painful sanctions are lifted.
“Everyone can easily say that (settling for) a nuclear freeze would allow North Korea to preserve its existing nuclear weapons. But I ask them what other options they have ”to carry out the denuclearization of North Korea, said Kim Yeol Soo, an analyst at the Institute of Military Affairs in South Korea.
Another possible topic during the US-South Korea negotiations is whether South Korea should actively participate in US-led efforts to curb China’s growing strength in the region.
South Korea is a long-standing ally of the United States and hosts some 28,500 American soldiers. But its economy is heavily dependent on trade with China, which makes it difficult to take any measure deemed provocative for its largest trading partner. When South Korea allowed the United States to install an anti-missile defense shield against North Korea on its soil in 2017, it suffered economic retaliation from China, which sees the system’s radar as a security threat.
South Korean Defense Minister Suh Wook told lawmakers on Tuesday that the U.S. had not formally proposed that South Korea join an expanded format of the so-called “Quad” group that includes the United States, Japan, Australia and India, and that the Americans probably will not make such a proposal during this week’s negotiations.
China called the Quad an attempt to curb its ambitions.
Kim Yeol Soo said the allies are likely to discuss Seoul’s adherence to an expanded Quad format, known as Quad Plus, although they will never publicly announce it to avoid irritating China. Kim said it would be “wise” for South Korea to join Quad Plus to express its views clearly and avoid being cast aside on issues involving Seoul.
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Associated Press editor Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.