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A plane assumed to be transporting Stephen Biegun, the US’ special representative for North Korea, arrives at the Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, on July 7. (Yonhap News)

North Korea repeated that it has no intention of meeting the US the very day that Stephen Biegun, the US’ special representative for North Korea, arrived in South Korea, effectively dashing hopes of a meeting between the two countries. As a result, the challenges of improving inter-Korean relations and maintaining momentum in the North Korean nuclear talks will rest on the shoulders of the South Korean government until the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

“Deputy Secretary of State and Special Representative for North Korea Stephen E. Biegun will travel to Seoul and Tokyo July 7-10, to meet with officials in the Republic of Korea and Japan to continue close allied cooperation on a range of bilateral and global issues and further strengthen coordination on the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK [North Korea],” the US State Department said in a press release on July 6. The State Department said that the primary goal of Biegun’s trip is not the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula but continuing “cooperation on a range of bilateral and global issues,” suggesting that a meeting with North Korea was not one of the main goals of the trip.

During the daily press briefing on July 7, Kim In-cheol, spokesperson of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), only said that Biegun would “reconfirm the strength of the South Korea-US alliance and hold an in-depth discussion of peninsular, regional, and global issues during a series of meetings” with First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Sei-young and other officials. “Regional and global issues” presumably meant a discussion about how to respond to China’s enactment of a new national security law in Hong Kong.

Since Biegun’s visit to South Korea was prompted by the earnest entreaty of the South Korean government to find a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations, observers were curious about the message Biegun has for North Korea. And since South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s remarks on on June 30 on the need for more progress toward North Korea-US talks before the US presidential election, there had been high hopes in some quarters that the US would deliver a breakthrough message that could kick start North Korea-US negotiations, which have been stalled since their summit in Hanoi in February 2019. But the US State Department instead reiterated its longstanding call for North Korea’s “final and fully verified denuclearization.”

North Korea also responded with chilly indifference. Biegun’s counterpart, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, rejected dialogue in a statement on July 4: “We do not feel any need to sit face to face with the US, as it does not consider the DPRK [North Korea]-US dialogue as [anything] more than a tool for grappling [with] its political crisis.” Early in the morning on July 7, Kwon Jong-gun, director general of the department of US Affairs at North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, said, “Explicitly speaking once again, we have no intention to sit face to face with US.” Kwon also had sharp words for the South Korean government’s efforts to spur on North Korea-US dialogue, remarking that “inter-Korean relations are bound to go further bankrupt as they only talk nonsense, unaware of the time.”

North Korea’s testy response appears to be based on its concern that resuming dialogue before the outcome of the US presidential election, just four months away, could lead to the kind of embarrassing situation it faced in 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration. That October, Jo Myong-rok, first vice chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, met then US President Bill Clinton in Washington, resulting in a joint communique in which the two governments promised to “make every effort in the future to build a new relationship free from past enmity.” Shortly afterward, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid a return visit to Pyongyang, raising hopes that the two countries would soon normalize their relationship. But all those efforts came to nothing when the Democratic candidate was defeated in the presidential election.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent, and Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

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