SEOUL, South Korea (PA) – Recently stopped in Tokyo, President Joe Biden’s chief diplomat and chief of defense traveled to South Korea on Wednesday, a day after North Korea made sure to pay attention to them, warning states United to “refrain from causing a stench” amid stalled nuclear negotiations.
How to get North Korea back in talks will be a major 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 talks 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 to leave nuclear weapons already manufactured in Pyongyang. .
Austin and Blinken will meet with their South Korean counterparts for separate talks on Wednesday and a joint “two plus two” meeting on Thursday, the first such contact between the two countries in five years.
South Korea is the second leg of their regional tour aimed at stimulating Asian American alliances to better meet 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 reaffirm their commitment to rid North Korea of all its nuclear bombs.
US-led diplomacy on the latter issue has been in the limelight since the February 2019 summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which collapsed due to US-led sanctions disputes. Since then, Kim has threatened to expand his nuclear arsenal in protest of what he called American hostility.
On Tuesday, Kim’s sister and a senior official, Kim Yo Jong, criticized the United States for ongoing regular military exercises with South Korea, which North Korea considers a repeat of the invasion.
“We take this opportunity to warn the new US administration,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement. “If he wants to sleep peacefully in the (next) four years, he should refrain from causing a stench at his first step.”
Some experts say Kim Yo Jong’s statement is a tactic of pressure and that Pyongyang could try to further increase animosities with gun tests to increase its leverage 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 hearing from allies and partners.
Blinken said Washington had contacted North Korea through several channels since mid-February, but received no response. He said the Biden administration is looking forward to completing its policy review in North Korea in the coming weeks and is looking at both possible “additional pressure” and “diplomatic channels”.
Shim Beomchul, an analyst at the Seoul National Strategy Research Institute, said he expects the Biden administration to reach an agreement with North Korea that resembles a 2015 agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. While the United States is unlikely to give up North Korea’s long-term commitment to denuclearization, reducing the country’s nuclear capabilities to zero is not a realistic short-term diplomatic goal, he said.
Trump has exploded from the Obama administration’s 2015 agreement in favor of what he called maximum pressure against Iran, and the Biden government is trying to revive it.
In a publication published in the New York Times in 2018, Blinken, then general manager of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, argued that the best deal the U.S. could reach with North Korea was “more than it will probably look like what Barack Obama has accomplished with Iran. He said an interim agreement would save time for negotiating a more comprehensive agreement, including a minute-sequenced roadmap that would require sustained diplomacy. This is the approach that Mr. Obama has taken with Iran. “
Other experts say an Iran-style deal will not work for North Korea. Iran has not built any bombs, but North Korea has already made dozens. They say North Korea, which has a history of derailing agreements with 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 (establishing) a nuclear freeze would allow North Korea to keep its existing nuclear weapons. But I ask them what other options they have “to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea, said Kim Yeol Soo, an analyst at the Korean Institute of Military Affairs in South Korea.
Another possible topic during the US-South Korea talks is whether South Korea should actively participate in US-led efforts to reduce China’s growing power in the region.
South Korea is a long-standing American ally and hosts about 28,500 American soldiers. But its economy is heavily dependent on trade with China, making it difficult to take any step that is considered challenging for its largest trading partner. When South Korea allowed the United States to install an anti-North Korean missile shield on its ground 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 United States has not formally proposed that South Korea join an extended format of the so-called “Quad” group that includes the United States, Japan, Australia and India. and that Americans probably won’t make such a proposal during this week’s talks.
China has called the Quad an attempt to control its ambitions.
Kim Yeol Soo said that the Allies will probably discuss that Seoul will join an extended Quad format, known as Quad Plus, although they will never announce it publicly to avoid upsetting China. Kim said it would be “wise” for South Korea to join Quad Plus to express its views clearly and avoid being excluded on issues involving Seoul.
___
Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to the report.