hankyoreh

Former US Ambassador to South Korea Sung Kim (left) and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui

US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, who previously served as ambassador to South Korea, is currently meeting North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui at Panmunjeom for working-level talks for the North Korea-US summit, it was recently confirmed.

According to The Hankyoreh’s own investigation and accounts in the Washington Post on May 27, Kim began working-level talks for the summit with Choe the same day at the Panmungak building on Panmunjeom’s North Korean side. The talks are scheduled to continue until May 29.

According to reports, Kim arrived at the working-level talks for the summit that day with senior US officials including White House National Security Council director for Korea Allison Hooker, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs Randall Shriver, and State Department officials who accompanied Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on his May 7–8 visit to Pyongyang.

In a Tweet on May 27, US President Donald Trump confirmed that the “United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” reconfirming his intentions to resume negotiations for the North Korea-US summit. “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day,” Trump continued. “Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”

The Washington Post reported that they would be focusing on North Korea’s nuclear program as the key issue for a first-ever North Korea-US summit scheduled to take place in Singapore on June 12. The talks took place without any prior announcements to the South Korean or US press. With little time remaining before the June 12 summit date, the two sides appear poised to work quickly on coordinating their remaining differences on key issues.

The key remaining issues between North Korea and US at present concern the method and timeline for North Korea’s denuclearization and the rewards to be offered by the US, including a clear pledge on the security of the North Korean regime. Pyongyang hopes to eliminate any foreign military threats and ensure its regime’s security before proceeding with full-scale denuclearization, while Washington hopes to see concrete and reliable initial denuclearization measures from the North.

During the Barack Obama administration, Sung Kim served as US Ambassador to South Korea from Nov. 2011 to Oct. 2014. Before that, he served as US representative to the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Choe Son-hui, considered a US expert who has long handled US-related issues in North Korea, is the same figure who recently infuriated Trump with a statement issued on May 24.

Trump went on to cancel the North Korea-US summit planned for June 12 in Singapore, but the danger of the talks falling through appears to have been narrowly averted since then by an additional statement from North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan and an inter-Korean summit on May 26.

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

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