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US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim conveys a document envelope to North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho ahead of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) foreign ministers meeting. (Yonhap News)

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared on TV to urge North Korea to move ahead with denuclearization, adding US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is ready to visit North Korea to meet with its leader, Kim Jong-un. Considering that Bolton has been repeating the same thing for several days now, the US appears to have settled on a “good cop, bad cop” strategy of combining dialogue with pressure about denuclearization. But stubbornly insisting on this familiar method is actually likely to prolong the current deadlock.

The reason that North Korea and the US’s negotiations are unable to gain any traction is because the two sides continue to wrangle over the North’s desire to officially declare the end of the Korean War and the US’s demand for the North to disclose its nuclear facilities. Another wrench in the works is the fact that the chief negotiators have been unable to move beyond the tired negotiating strategy of demanding that the other side be the first to give ground.

Given these considerations, there appears to be a critical need for the leaders of the two sides to take direct action to break out of the current impasse. In the response that Trump sent to Kim last week, he reportedly suggested that Pompeo visit North Korea. This gives us an opportunity to consider the idea of the two leaders trading an end-of-the-war declaration for disclosure of a list of nuclear facilities. If Trump charges Pompeo with the mission of arranging such a simultaneous trade with Kim, it could maneuver the negotiations out of the gridlock and into the fast lane.

North Korea should give serious thought to this trade, too, instead of demanding that the end-of-the-war declaration must come first. The North Koreans appear to believe that dismantling their nuclear test site at Punggye Village and their intercontinental ballistic missile test site at Tongchang Village earned them the right to get such a declaration from the US.

But it’s become clear that the US is less interested in the North halting its development of “future nukes” by shutting down nuclear test sites than in its disclosing its already manufactured nuclear weapons and missiles and letting in observers. For North Korea to get an end-of-the-war declaration, therefore, it needs to show that it intends to boldly take the initial steps toward denuclearization.

If North Korea and the US make this kind of compromise, South Korea and other countries in the area will have more room to maneuver toward easing sanctions against the North. If the North Korea-US negotiations break out of this deadlock, as a first step sanctions that affect North Koreans’ quality of life can be lifted and rapid progress can be made in inter-Korean economic cooperation as well. The South Korean government needs to intervene between North Korea and the US as a facilitator, offering a plan that will be acceptable to both sides and persuading them to accept it. Since North Korea and the US don’t trust each other enough yet, now is the time for Seoul to be even bolder and more proactive in serving as an intermediary.

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