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White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. (AP/Yonhap News)

On June 30, White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien called on North Korea to return to negotiations with the US, remarking that the door to dialogue remains open.

O’Brien made the remark during an opening speech for a video seminar on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War that was hosted by the Center for the National Interest, an American think tank, with funding from the Korea Foundation.

O’Brien said that US President Donald Trump is committed to lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula and, for that reason, has done things that no other American president has done. According to O’Brien, Trump has built a relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un through personal engagement.

Echoing Trump, O’Brien said that “the United States wants to see North Korea achieve a bright economic future under Chairman Kim’s leadership.”

While admitting that “tangible progress has been slow,” O’Brien said that “the door to dialogue and progress remains open.”

The national security advisor also urged North Korea to “avoid provocations, abide by obligations under UN Security Council resolutions, and return to sustained and substantive negotiations.”

Recently, the US has been sending North Korea a consistent message that it needs to avoid provocation and return to dialogue. The US is apparently trying to prevent the North Korean issue from becoming a greater liability before the presidential election this coming November.

During a video forum organized by the German Marshall Fund on June 30, US Deputy Secretary of State and Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun said that the US would hold open the door to diplomacy and called on North Korea to adopt a forward-looking attitude toward denuclearization. Biegun made these remarks shortly before he was scheduled to visit Seoul at the beginning of July.

During the seminar on Wednesday, O’Brien described the South Korea-US alliance as “the linchpin of peace and security not only on the Korean Peninsula but [in] the entire Indo-Pacific region.”

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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