‘Spy chief may visit North Korea soon to revive nuke talks’

SEOUL, Mar 6, 2019, The Korea Times. President Moon Jae-in is considering sending National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon to North Korea as a special envoy to discuss another summit with its leader Kim Jong-un, a presidential aide said Wednesday, reported The Korea Times.

This is to find a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations between North Korea and the United States amid questions about the future of their denuclearization talks following the failed Hanoi summit.

“Suh may travel to Pyongyang as soon as possible to arrange another summit between the leaders of the two Koreas. Details of Suh’s trip to the North Korean capital have yet to be fixed,” the aide said on condition of anonymity.

Suh has played a significant role in realizing three previous inter-Korean summits under the Moon administration.

The source said it remains to be seen whether the spy chief will deliver a handwritten message from Moon to Kim.

Late Tuesday, Rep. Park Jie-won of the minor opposition Party for Democracy and Peace who was also a former special envoy to the North, told a local radio talk show that sending a special envoy was a matter of the utmost priority.

“Because one obvious reason for the breakdown of the summit is its process, South Korea’s role is to keep the momentum of the nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang alive by helping them continue dialogue. We have to send a special envoy to North Korea to get their thoughts and for conditions or prerequisites to prevent a possible vacuum in negotiations,” Park said.

The second Trump-Kim summit, last week, was a setback for the Moon administration, which is desperate to advance various inter-Korean economic projects and prevent new conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula.

During a call to Moon following his departure from Hanoi on Air Force One, Trump again asked him to work as a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang again, and to share the outcome of future talks with the North Korean leader. Moon accepted the request, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

The source said it was possible Moon would visit Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Trump “soon,” a proposal made by the President that the U.S. leader accepted.

Cheong Wa Dae said the idea of launching semiofficial three-way talks with the United States and North Korea was mostly aimed at narrowing their differences to get officials back to working-level discussions.

Senior South Korean nuclear negotiator Lee Do-hoon plans to meet his U.S. counterpart Stephen Biegun and other U.S. officials handling national security-related issues in Washington today (KST).

U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said at a news briefing that the United States remains “in regular contact” with North Korea, but declined to say whether they had talked since the summit.

In Hanoi, North Korea demanded a partial lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for it shutting down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, with IAEA-led inspectors overseeing the relevant processes “fully and verifiably.”

But the U.S. demanded details on undeclared plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities hidden around the country as well as the dismantlement of the aged Yongbyon site. This was seen as a rebuff of North Korea’s repeated requests for a “phased approach” in dismantling its nuclear program.

Recent reports said North Korea has begun restoring parts of a missile launch test site in Tongchang-ri that it had started to dismantle. Some work was taking place at the site including replacing a roof and a door at the facility.

By Kim Yoo-chul