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US President Donald Trump holds a press conference at Camp David on Jan. 6. (UPI/Yonhap News)

US President Donald Trump has expressed his full support and expectations for high-level inter-Korean talks, even holding open the possibility of personally engaging in dialogue with North Korea. But high-ranking officials in the Trump administration remain ambivalent about whether this will lead to North Korea-US dialogue, which they say will depend on the results of the inter-Korean talks.

Trump expressed these views in response to a question about whether he was willing to speak on the phone with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The question came during a press conference held after a meeting with the leadership of the Republican Party at Camp David in Maryland on Jan. 6.

“Sure, I always believe in talking. Absolutely I would do that, I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all,” he said. Trump added that the US would join talks with North Korea when the time was right but said it was best for North and South Korea to hold talks about the Olympics for now. He appeared to be strongly indicating that he would join talks with North Korea after the high-level inter-Korean talks, if the conditions are right.

This is the first time that Trump has expressed his willingness to negotiate with North Korea since August, when a reporter asked him after a meeting of the National Security Council whether he would consider negotiations with North Korea under different conditions. At the time, Trump said he would certainly consider such negotiations and that the time had come to do so. Considering that Trump mentioned sitting down for a hamburger with Kim Jong-un while he was running for president in 2016, the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue gives him a certain amount of diplomatic flexibility, and his remarks also lend support to inter-Korean dialogue.

"President Moon [Jae-in] called me and we had a great discussion a couple of days ago,” Trump said. I'm behind [inter-Korean dialogue] 100%.” This was not mentioned in the press release published by the White House immediately after the two leaders’ telephone conversation, in contrast with the Blue House’s press release, but Trump in effect confirmed his support directly.

“If we can come up with a very peaceful and very good solution… If something can happen and something can come out of those talks, that would be a great thing for all of humanity. That would be a great thing for the world,” Trump said, explaining that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and “a lot of people… [are] working on it.”

"I'd like to see them getting involved in the Olympics and maybe things go from there,” Trump added.

"[Kim] knows I'm not messing around. I'm not messing around. Not even a little bit. Not even 1%,” Trump said. “We have a very firm stance. Look, our stance, you know what it is. We're very firm.” This appears to mean that, unless North Korea takes steps toward denuclearization, “all options” are on the table, including tougher sanctions.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan responded to a question about whether there were preconditions for dialogue with Kim Jong-un by denying that Trump had said that, which prompted Trump to confirm Ryan’s mark: “It’s not what I said at all.”

“Too early to tell” whether bilateral US-North Korea dialogue will happen

But when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was asked during interviews by CNN and AP on Jan. 5 whether the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue marked the beginning of nuclear talks or US-North Korea talks, Tillerson responded cautiously that it’s “too early to tell.”

Tillerson explained that the inter-Korean talks could give North Korea an opportunity to show the US what it wants to discuss, which he regards as very significant and important. But he added that the meeting could be about the Olympics and not lead to anything else. “So how we begin the talks is yet to be determined, but we clearly need a signal from North Korea that they understand these talks must lead to [denuclearization],” he said.

During an interview with NHK that was broadcast on Jan. 7, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that North Korea’s plan to participate in the Olympics was a notable change. But he added that dialogue for dialogue’s sake was meaningless and that there would have to be concrete action for the talks to be meaningful.

Abe’s response was more positive than remarks made by Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera on Jan. 5 that “the general view is that the international community has ultimately been deceived when it has given aid to North Korea for taking an interest in dialogue.” This shift in tone may have been influenced by the US’s expression of support for inter-Korean dialogue.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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