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US President Donald Trump in a meeting with key personnel on Aug. 24. Pictured from the left are Andrew Kim

Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the Workers' Party of (North) Korea, warned in a secret letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that denuclearization talks are “again at stake and may fall apart,” CNN reported on Aug. 28.

Previously, the Washington Post reported that this letter was the reason that US President Donald Trump cancelled Pompeo’s visit to North Korea.

These reports make it clear that North Korea and the US are digging in their heels in their disagreement about the denuclearization talks. Since US Secretary of Defense James Mattis went even further by bringing up the possibility of resuming South Korea-US joint military exercises, affairs on the Korean Peninsula appear to have run into serious trouble. Rather than escalating the confrontation, North Korea and the US ought to look for a dramatic change of attitude.

It seems clear that the US’s full-court press – including the possibility of resuming joint exercises – is part of a Trumpian negotiating tactic targeting North Korea’s stubbornness. Since negotiations are by definition characterized by playing hard to get, it’s possible to understand why North Korea and the US are duking it out like this. But since the denuclearization talks are such a sensitive matter, this kind of brinkmanship runs the risk of derailing and otherwise jeopardizing the negotiations. On top of that, Trump has further complicated the already complicated denuclearization talks by adding the trade war with China into the equation.

The US bears no small share of the responsibility for letting things reach this point. Trump had originally been supportive of officially declaring the end of the Korean War, but his attitude changed after the summit in Singapore on June 12. It was the US that turned the end-of-war declaration – which was supposed to grease the wheels of the North Korea-US denuclearization talks – into a point of contention in those talks.

For its part, North Korea will have to normalize its relations with the US before it can focus on building its economy, and to do that it needs to quickly wrap up denuclearization. Since North Korea has no choice but to move toward denuclearization, it needs to show the courage to make the first step. The US also needs to open the door so that North Korea can exercise that courage. Neither should be frittering away time in this kind of chicken game.

It’s also discouraging to see the US trying to put the brakes on inter-Korean relations. It’s hard not to conclude that the US was behind the postponement of the opening ceremony for the inter-Korean liaison office. The UN Command’s rejection of an inter-Korean plan to send a South Korean train up to Sinuiju to assess the status of the Gyeongui Line is also troubling, since it suggests that the US is being too touchy about improving relations between South and North Korea. It’s a shame that the US administration fails to comprehend that improving inter-Korean relations can have a synergetic effect on North Korea-US relations.

Letting the deadlock in the North Korea-US negotiations drag on isn’t beneficial to anyone – neither South Korea, North Korea nor the US. This is the time for the South Korean government to demonstrate its ability as a mediator. While thorough preparations should be made for the inter-Korean summit that’s scheduled for September, Seoul can’t just wait for the summit.

During the time that remains before the summit, the government ought to put all its energy into finding a breakthrough to the deadlock and persuading the US and North Korea to sign on. Missing this chance could throw everything into chaos.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]