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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shakes hands with (from the left) Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe

After the postponement of high-level talks between North Korea and the US, the two sides’ struggle over sanctions has been intensifying. The US’ attempts to tighten the sanctions are fully at odds with the North’s insistence that sanctions must be eased before progress can be made on denuclearization. This has also heightened concerns that the deadlock in the negotiations could become protracted.

During a press conference following a US-China foreign policy and security dialogue on Nov. 9, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged China not to withdraw from the framework of sanctions against North Korea. China’s cooperation on implementing UN Security Council sanctions regulations, Pompeo said, would be very helpful in creating a meaningful breakthrough on the important issue of denuclearization.

In an opinion piece that ran in the Washington Post on Nov. 9, US Vice President Mike Pence, who is currently on a trip to Asia, made clear that the US will continue to impose unprecedented diplomatic and economic pressure on North Korea. Pence also asked all the countries in the Indo-Pacific region to maintain their pressure campaign, including sanctions, until the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is achieved.

While the US’s “tightening of the reins” represents a tactical effort to pressure North Korea to denuclearize, some analysts are also seeing this as a way to buy time while focusing on keeping the situation under control.

“President Trump could move toward a Trumpian ‘strategic patience’ that focuses on managing the situation while not disturbing the framework for negotiations. Since President Trump and his advisors are confident that sanctions have brought North Korea to the negotiating table, they’ll be reluctant to ease those sanctions,” predicted Lee Su-hyeong, head of overseas strategies research for the Institute for National Security Strategy. During a press conference on Nov. 7, following the midterm elections, Trump repeatedly said that the “sanctions are still on” and that there was “no rush.”

On Nov. 10, the Choson Sinbo, a newspaper published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) that represents the North Korean position to the outside world, said that “if the US’ discussion of ‘not rushing’ means that it wants to slow things down and prefers to maintain the status quo instead of implementing the joint statement, there’s no need to bother with dialogue.”

The newspaper referred once again to a Nov. 2 column by the director of a US research institute at the North Korean Foreign Ministry that mentioned the possibility of North Korea returning to its two-track policy of developing the economy and nuclear weapons and warned that “that’s not the sort of thing the institute director could write on his own authority.”

Mark Fitzpatrick, former acting deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation for the US State Department, told the Voice of America (VOA) that while the Trump administration might think it’s benefiting as long as North Korea doesn’t launch any missiles, North Korea’s resumption of such experimentation would not only pose a strategic threat but could also be detrimental to Trump’s political position.

But there are also some analysts who think that North Korea isn’t very likely to revert to provocations. “Since North Korea values the major developments in inter-Korean relations this year, it won’t go back to developing nuclear weapons and missiles in consideration of the impact that would have on inter-Korean relations. It might attempt to find a breakthrough by speeding up inter-Korean relations,” Lee Su-hyeong said.

The South Korean government had been planning to move forward with connecting inter-Korean railroads and having North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visit the South after the high-level North Korea-US talks. Now that those talks have been delayed, Seoul finds itself in an awkward position and is scrambling to find a way out.

“Since President Trump has to start working for reelection now, he needs to get results on North Korea’s denuclearization, and in order to make progress on denuclearization, it’s essential to ease sanctions on the North. South Korea needs to take creative action, moving forward with inter-Korean agreements while simultaneously persuading the North to take steps toward denuclearization and the US to gradually ease sanctions,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

Other analysts think that South Korea needs to become even more proactive about persuading the US through the newly established South Korea-US working group.

By Park Min-hee, staff reporter

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