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A photo of US Secretary Mike Pompeo and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un posted on US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account on Oct. 7. Also present is Kim Yo-jong

At 7 am on Oct. 7, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left Tokyo bound for Pyongyang. At 5:13 pm of the same day, he touched down at Osan Air Base, a US Air Force base in South Korea. Considering that it takes over two hours to fly from Tokyo to Pyongyang and over an hour to fly from Pyongyang to Osan, Pompeo was in Pyongyang for less than seven hours.

Nevertheless, Pompeo spent a little over five and a half hours with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – two hours in a morning meeting, an hour and a half at lunch and two hours in an afternoon meeting. Excluding the time it takes to drive from Pyongyang Sunan International Airport to the Paekhwawon Guest House and back again, Pompeo spent basically his entire time in North Korea with Kim.

That means that Kim fully devoted himself to entertaining Pompeo, which also implies that Kim is personally attending to efforts to reach a breakthrough in the impasse with the US.

“This means that Kim Jong-un intends to personally orchestrate negotiations with the US. This is a crucial signal of Kim’s seriousness and sincerity in regard to US relations,” said a former high-ranking official in the South Korean government.

There was another scene that epitomizes Kim Jong-un’s all-out effort. One of the North Koreans sitting alongside Kim during his meeting with Pompeo was his younger sister Kim Yo-jong, first vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee. Kim Yo-jong was not personally involved in the negotiations during Pompeo’s first three trips to North Korea.

In related photographs that ran on the first page of the Oct. 8 issue of the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Kim Jong-un was sitting with Kim Yo-jong on his left and an interpreter on his right. On the other side of the table, Pompeo is sitting with US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun on his left and CIA Korea Mission Center Chief Andrew Kim on his right.

“I’ve been informed that Kim Jong-un and Mike Pompeo spent five and a half hours together. During the morning and afternoon meetings, there were apparently only three people in the room [representing North Korea]: Kim Jong-un, Kim Yo-jong and an interpreter,” said Blue House spokesperson Kim Eui-kyum.

Such changes suggest that Kim is taking extraordinary measures. Missing from the meeting room this time around was Kim Yong-chol, North Korea's WPK vice chairman and director of the WPK United Front Department, who was not only Pompeo’s negotiating partner during his first three visits to North Korea but also visited the US to deliver Kim Jong-un’s first personal letter to US President Donald Trump on June 1.

Amid the seismic shifts in North Korea-US relations this year, if Pompeo has served as Trump’s proxy, Kim Yong-chol has been regarded as Kim Jong-un’s. But on Oct. 7, Kim Yong-chol was only present for the luncheon at the Paekhwawon Guest House.

The replacement of the person accompanying Kim Jong-un in these meetings bears a significance that goes beyond the mere substitution of a proxy. Whereas Kim Yong-chol is a typically crafty and ideological bureaucrat who has been dealing with the nuclear issue since the early 1990s, Kim Yo-jong is Kim Jong-un’s own flesh and blood, which gives her a completely different status and role. Kim Yo-jong clearly demonstrated her unlimited access during the first three summits between her brother and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

In addition, Pompeo had let his dissatisfaction with Kim Yong-chol as a negotiating partner be known in a variety of ways. Some observers even believe that Kim Yong-chol’s replacement represents a reprimand for the severe deadlock between the two sides that followed the breakdown in negotiations during Pompeo’s third visit to North Korea.

“I think that Kim Jong-un’s decision to include Kim Yo-jong at the meeting and to leave out Kim Yong-chol made a very big impression on President Trump and Secretary Pompeo,” said a former high-ranking official in the South Korean government.

One interesting development in connection with this was an article in the Oct. 8 issue of the Rodong Sinmun that said that Kim Jong-un and Pompeo had “traded interesting ideas [over lunch] about further enhancing communication and engagement between the two sides in order to develop North Korea-US relations and for the success of the North Korea-US summit.”

The topics discussed could have ranged from the mundane (increasing exchange in various fields) to the fraught (setting up a liaison office), as well as the critical question of who will be responsible for North Korea-US negotiations. During an interview with Fox News on Sept. 25, Moon Jae-in said that long-term observation by the Americans would be necessary to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear complex and that establishing a liaison office in Pyongyang for that observation was worth considering as a corresponding measure.

In addition to this, Kim Jong-un and Pompeo also “agreed to hold working-level negotiations soon to prepare for the second North Korea-US summit” and “discussed related methods and procedures,” the Rodong Sinmun reported.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer, and Noh Ji-won and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporters

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