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Kim Hyun-chong

During a visit to South Korea, Stephen Biegun, the US State Department’s special representative for North Korea, canceled all public statements he was scheduled to make on May 10. About the only message that Stephen Biegun communicated by way of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is that the door is still open for North Korea to return to negotiations. Since the North launched two short-range missiles a day earlier, South Korea and the US have said little, apparently focused on devising countermeasures.

After arriving at MOFA, in the Doryeom neighborhood of Seoul, on the morning of May 10, Biegun met with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. That was followed by deliberations with Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, who is Biegun’s counterpart as South Korea’s chief envoy for the North Korean nuclear issue. Biegun and Lee also jointly led the meeting of the South Korea-US working group.

MOFA reported that Biegun, during his meeting with Kang, said that this is a very important time for maintaining communication and cooperation between South Korea and the US and that the door is still open for North Korea to return to negotiations. Biegun was apparently attempting to keep his response as brief as possible while avoiding any direct response to the North’s missile launch. The details of what Biegun and Lee discussed in their meeting and the working group’s meeting were not made public.

During a meeting with Unification Ministry Kim Yeon-chul on Friday afternoon, Biegun and Kim agreed on the importance of maintaining stability in Korean Peninsula affairs and reaffirmed the necessity of quickly resuming inter-Korean dialogue and North Korea-US dialogue, the Unification Ministry reported. After that, Biegun held a 1-hour and 20-minute meeting with Kim Hyun-chong, second deputy chief of South Korea’s National Security Office, but the Blue House didn’t release the details of what the two discussed.

After North Korea’s missile launch on May 9, the two countries said they would allow reporters to listen to Biegun and Kang’s introductory remarks, which hadn’t been on the schedule, which drew attention to what Biegun might say. But that morning, an informal meeting that Biegun and Lee had been supposed to hold was canceled. After that, the public statements regarding Biegun’s meetings with Kang and Kim Yeon-chul that had been scheduled were canceled as well. This decision was reportedly made at the request of the US and on orders from the Blue House.

In a delicate situation in which the US and North Korea are battling to see who blinks first, the US may have decided that it would be impossible to release a carefully prepared message, and South Korea may have been concerned about unexpected remarks. Whatever the case, this reflects the consternation felt by both sides and suggests they’ve kept their response low-key for now to keep the situation under control.

“The point was to keep a careful eye on messaging considering that North Korea fired a missile yesterday,” said an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

By Kim Ji-eun and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporters

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