hankyoreh

Sept. 1. (AP/Yonhap News)

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

On Aug. 31, the White House confirmed that no changes have been made to the basic American policy on North Korea. The remarks come amid speculation that relations between the US and North Korea could improve and rumors that the two sides have held secret contact recently, suggesting that it will not be easy to improve relations.

Patrick Ventrell, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, declined to answer a question by the Hankyoreh’s Washington correspondent about whether American officials had visited North Korea recently, stating that American policy toward North Korea is “the same and unchanged.”

“North Korea must show it is serious and prepared to abide by its commitments, particularly concerning denuclearization, before authentic and credible negotiations are possible,” he said.

Ventrell cited a speech made by National Security Advisor Susan Rice in Nov. 2013, in which she said, “We are prepared for negotiations, provided that they are authentic and credible, get at the entirety of the North’s nuclear program, and result in concrete and irreversible steps toward denuclearization. Pyongyang’s attempts to engage in dialogue while keeping critical elements of its weapons programs running are unacceptable, and they will not succeed.”

“Nothing has changed since then,” Ventrell noted.

Ventrell emphasized that the US has “direct channels of communication with the DPRK, including liaison with the DPRK Mission in New York.” This is being seen as hinting at the possibility that more use could be made of the “New York channel,” a diplomatic link between the US State Department’s special envoy to the six-party talks and the North Korea’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN.

On Sep. 2, Sydney Seiler, the White House’s advisor in charge of the Korean peninsula, will be newly appointed as special envoy to the six-party talks, a position that has been vacant since June 2013.

While some predict that the US will make an effort before the mid-term elections to improve relations with North Korea in order to manage the situation on the Korean peninsula and to secure the release of the three Americans detained in North Korea, no specific movements have been detected yet.

“North Korea is willing to release the detainees, but it will only do so when official negotiations take place about normalizing diplomatic relations and signing a peace treaty. But this kind of solution is unacceptable for the US, while American demands about preliminary steps toward denuclearization are unacceptable for North Korea. That’s why no steps are being taken at the moment,” said Tony Namkung, a scholar who is familiar with relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

On Sept. 1, North Korea granted CNN access to three US citizens currently being detained. The interviews could be a way of pressuring the US into holding negotiations for their release.

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