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US State Department Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun in Seoul on Feb. 10. (Yonhap News)

US State Department Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun may be hearing advice from the so-called “Stanford team” and “Carnegie team” as he spearheads working-level negotiations with North Korea, a Washington Post columnist speculated. The two expert groups amount to “tutors” for Biegun, who is attempting a step-by-step, simultaneous solution on the North Korean nuclear issue.

On Feb. 12, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius published a piece titled “Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un is partly hot air. It could also make the world safer.” In it, he wrote that Biegun “has been collecting ideas from experts from Stanford and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.” Adding that it was unclear what was discussed in their conversations with Biegun, Ignatius went on to describe the two expert groups’ approach on North Korea issues.

The Carnegie team, which is led by Ariel Levite and Toby Dalton, has focused on the question of how to verify the limits of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs amid its lack of modern infrastructure and poor record-keeping, Ignatius wrote. He went on to characterize the Carnegie team as advocating a form of “probabilistic verification,” or developing a reliable overall assessment of Pyongyang’s compliances without necessarily verifying every one of its nuclear weapons.

The Stanford team is led by nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker – who has personally observed the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon – along with visiting scholar Robert Carlin and researcher Elliot Serbin. Experts on this team argue that North Korea “will not give up its [nuclear] weapons and its weapons program until its security can be assured,” Ignatius said.

“Such assurance cannot be achieved simply by an American promise or an agreement on paper, it will require a substantial period of co-existence and interdependence [to build trust] [. . .] that may stretch to 10 years,” he quoted the experts as saying.

Biegun met with the experts on Jan. 31 at Stanford, where he delivered a talk in which he referred to pursuing denuclearization “simultaneously and in parallel.” The practical views of the expert groups may be seen as having had an influence on his approach to North Korea issues.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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