UN aid relief a potential opening for Trump-Kim talks, say analysts
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US President Donald Trump met North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un three times during his first term – once even declaring they were “in love”.
PHOTO: AFP
SEOUL – A new push to lift aid sanctions on North Korea could kick-start efforts to lure its leader Kim Jong Un into nuclear negotiations with US President Donald Trump, analysts told AFP.
Both Seoul and Washington appear keen to use Mr Trump’s looming trip to China
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has been particularly keen to mend ties with the North, although his overtures have so far been largely ignored.
“These exemptions are certainly aimed at signalling to Pyongyang that Seoul isn’t going to give up any opportunity for a dialogue with North,” foreign affairs expert Minseon Ku told AFP.
“The Lee administration has been pursuing the creation of a diplomatic space for Trump and Kim to meet since Lee’s visit to Washington last August,” said Dr Ku, from DePaul University in Chicago.
North Korea’s economy has for years languished under heavy Western sanctions on everything from oil to seafood, measures that aim to choke off funding for its nuclear weapons programme.
A UN Security Council committee recently approved exemptions allowing fresh flows of food and medicine into North Korea, diplomatic sources told AFP last week.
With the move, Washington and Seoul “are essentially removing a technical and moral alibi for Pyongyang’s refusal to engage. It is a low-cost, high-optics manoeuvre”, Dr Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, told AFP.
Mr Trump is expected to visit North Korea’s long-time ally China in April.
Speculation is mounting that he may seek some kind of meeting with Mr Kim on the sidelines of that visit.
Dr Ku said Mr Trump would be eager to display his diplomatic prowess by securing a rare photo op with Mr Kim.
Nuclear negotiations
Mr Trump met Mr Kim three times during his first term – once even declaring that they were “in love” – as he pushed to hammer out a long-coveted deal on denuclearisation.
Their highly anticipated Hanoi summit in 2019 collapsed over differences about what Pyongyang would get in return for giving up its nuclear weapons.
No tangible progress has been made between the two countries since then.
Mr Trump stepped up his courtship of Mr Kim during a tour of Asia in 2025, saying he was “100 per cent” open to a meeting.
He even bucked decades of US policy by conceding that North Korea was “sort of a nuclear power”.
But Mr Kim has so far refused to take the bait.
Mr Lim Eul-chul from the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University said: “Like any negotiating party, North Korea dislikes unpredictability and uncertainty.
“Trump is not seen as a reliable partner, and Pyongyang may be buying time to maximise its leverage.”
North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party is preparing to hold a rare congress
The gathering, typically held just once every five years, will be closely watched for any signs of a shift in foreign policy.
At the last congress in 2021, Mr Kim declared that the United States was North Korea’s “principal enemy”.
Mr Kim appeared alongside China’s Mr Xi Jinping and Russia’s Mr Vladimir Putin at a grand military parade in Beijing in 2025 – a striking display of his powerful friends and elevated status in global politics.
He may seek to engage with Mr Trump in a similar vein to Mr Putin, who has sought to find areas of economic cooperation despite intense strategic competition, said Korea scholar Vladimir Tikhonov.
“It can be a good model for Kim – talking to the US does not (have to be) surrender,” he told AFP. AFP
