Trump team weighs direct talks with North Korea’s Kim in new diplomatic push: Sources

WASHINGTON -

US President-elect Donald Trump’s

team is discussing pursuing direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, hoping a fresh diplomatic push can lower the risks of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Several in Trump’s team now see a direct approach from the President-elect, to build on a relationship that already exists, as most likely to break the ice with Mr Kim, years after the two traded insults and what Trump called “beautiful” letters in an unprecedented diplomatic effort during his first term in office, the duo said.

The policy discussions are fluid and no final decisions have been made by Trump, the sources said.

The President-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

What reciprocation Mr Kim will offer Trump is unclear.

The North Koreans ignored four years of outreach by US President Joe Biden to start talks with no pre-conditions, and Mr Kim is emboldened by an expanded missile arsenal and a much closer relationship with Russia.

“We have already gone as far as we can on negotiating with the United States,” Mr Kim said last week in a speech at a Pyongyang military exhibition, according to state media.

During his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump held three meetings with Mr Kim,

in Singapore,

Hanoi and at the Korean border, the first time a sitting US president had set foot in the country.

Their diplomacy yielded no concrete results, even as Trump described their talks as falling “in love”.

The US called for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, while Mr Kim demanded full sanctions relief, then issued new threats.

It is not clear what result a new diplomatic effort would yield.

An initial Trump goal would be to re-establish basic engagement, but further policy aims or a precise timetable have not been set, the two sources said.

And the issue may take a back seat to more pressing foreign policy concerns in the Middle East and Ukraine, according to one person briefed on the transition’s thinking.

North Korean state media has not yet publicly mentioned the re-election of Trump, and Mr Kim said in November that the US was ramping up tension and provocations, raising the risks of nuclear war.

Trump and some of his allies left office with the impression that the direct approach was Washington’s best shot at influencing behaviour north of the demilitarised zone, which has divided the Korean Peninsula for seven decades.

The countries’ war was never technically ended, even as the guns fell silent.

On Nov 22, Trump named one of the people who implemented that initial North Korea strategy, former State Department official Alex Wong, as his deputy national security adviser.

“As deputy special representative for North Korea, he helped negotiate my summit with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un,” Trump said in a statement.

Tensions rise

Trump will inherit an increasingly tense situation with Mr Kim when he returns to the White House in January, as he did in 2017, an atmosphere allies expect the incoming president to confront head-on.

“My experience with President Trump is he’s much more likely to be open to direct engagement,” said US Senator Bill Hagerty, a Trump ally, in an interview with Reuters earlier in 2024. “I’m optimistic that we can see an improvement in the relationship and perhaps a different posture adopted by Kim Jong Un if that dialogue were reopened again.”

Washington has a dossier of concerns over the country’s expanding nuclear weapons and missile programme, its increasingly hostile rhetoric towards South Korea and its close collaboration with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These topics are expected to feature in Biden administration transition briefings for Trump aides, according to a US official.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Particularly concerning to Washington are the prospects of increased sharing of nuclear or missile technology between Russia and North Korea and the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to Russia to help in the war with Ukraine.

Reuters reported on Nov 25 that North Korea is expanding a key weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine, citing researchers at a US-based think-tank who examined satellite images.

US officials said those factors raise the risk of a conflict between multiple nuclear armed nations in Europe or Asia, including the US and its allies, which include South Korea and Japan.

American troops are deployed throughout the region to deter North Korea, and Trump has insisted that US allies share more of the cost for those deployments.

In his final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier in November in Peru, Mr Biden asked for Beijing to use its leverage to reel in North Korea.

Opportunity for China and the US to work together may be limited as Trump vows vast tariffs on Chinese goods and stacks his inner circle with China hardliners, such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Representative Mike Waltz as national security adviser.

Trump said in October the two countries would have had “a nuclear war with millions of people killed”, but that he had stopped it, thanks to his ties with the North’s leader. REUTERS