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Vietnamese government employees set up a CCTV system near the State Guest House in Hanoi in preparation for the second North Korea-US summit on Feb. 19. (Yonhap News)

With the North Korea-US summit approaching on Feb. 27-28, there have been multiple reports in the US media stating that the US is considering the option of setting up joint liaison offices with North Korea. The next question is whether the summit will result in an agreement to open liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang as a step toward resetting North Korea-US relations.

On Feb. 18, CNN quoted senior diplomatic sources as saying that the US was seriously considering a plan to exchange liaison officers with North Korea and that this would be the first step toward establishing official relations. The sources said that, if the plan moves forward, several liaison officers from the US would be dispatched to set up a liaison office inside North Korea and that the team would be led by a high-ranking diplomat who speaks Korean. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the US is considering the option of opening a liaison office in North Korea.

These reports appeared as US State Department Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun and North Korea State Affairs Commission Special Representative for US Affairs Kim Hyok-chol agreed to hold last-minute working-level negotiations in Hanoi this week. They appear to indicate that the US is placing considerable weight on the option of offering to establish a liaison office in North Korea.

An agreement by North Korea and the US to set up liaison offices would symbolize how much their relations have improved while indicating that they are moving toward official diplomatic relations. The US also opened liaison offices in China and Vietnam before officially establishing diplomatic relations and opening embassies in those countries.

Opening liaison offices could be regarded as a major step toward implementing the agreement the two sides reached during their summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018, to establish new bilateral relations. Liaison offices in Washington and Pyongyang could function as an ongoing and stable channel of communication alongside the “New York channel” (North Korea’s delegation to the UN), which is currently the only official diplomatic connection between the two countries.

This isn’t the first time that North Korea and the US have discussed liaison offices. The idea was also part of the Agreed Framework that the two sides forged in Geneva in Oct. 1994 to deal with the first North Korean nuclear crisis, which had been precipitated by the North’s withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1993. As part of the Agreed Framework, the US promised to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors and oil in exchange for North Korea freezing its nuclear program, and the two sides also agreed to set up liaison offices in their respective capitals and to upgrade their bilateral relations to the ambassador level.

North Korea and the US made a fair amount of progress along those lines, sending teams to the two capitals to explore sites for their liaison offices and staff residences, and the US even named Spence Richardson, former director of the Korean Affairs Bureau for the US State Department, to be the first director of its liaison office in Pyongyang. The two countries agreed to begin the process of setting up the offices through correspondence between the North Korean Foreign Ministry and the US State Department, but those efforts went nowhere.

Illuminating commentary on these events is provided by Lynn Turk, one of the US negotiators at the time and currently a member of the board of directors of the Pacific Century Institute. In an article posted to the website 38 North in June 2018, Turk wrote, “In summer 1995, the DPRK side sent a message that it was delaying the exchange indefinitely. Later that year the DPRK said it was canceling the exchange until further notice.” Tensions increased after a US military helicopter that crossed the DMZ was shot down in Dec. 1994, and Turk speculates that the North Korean military voiced its opposition to the establishment of a liaison office during that process.

Establishing liaison offices is something that could be done with comparatively little difficulty if the two sides reach an agreement. The question is whether this is a priority for North Korea. Observers think that North Korea is unlikely to be content with merely setting up largely symbolic liaison offices, considering that it wants meaningful movement toward easing sanctions and economic cooperation, including reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex and resuming tourism to Mt. Kumgang.

In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun on Feb. 18, Moon Chung-in, the South Korean president’s special advisor for unification, foreign affairs and national security, said that North Korea won’t be satisfied with the establishment of a liaison office or an end-of-war declaration alone. It’s also possible that the US, which is loath to give North Korea the sanctions relief it wants, is attempting to inflate the value of the liaison office as an additional incentive for North Korea’s denuclearization.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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

Caption: Vietnamese government employees set up a CCTV system near the State Guest House in Hanoi in preparation for the second North Korea-US summit on Feb. 19. (Yonhap News)