North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un confirmed he would hold summits with the leaders of the US and South Korea. He would also consider abandoning the nuclear weapon programme. The development came after Mr Kim visited this week Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing.
That was Mr Kim’s first meeting with any head of state and his first trip abroad since succeeding his father as dictator in 2011. The two-day visit was shrouded in secrecy from the moment an armoured train pulled into Beijing station unannounced, with official confirmation only coming after Mr Kim’s train departed Beijing for Pyongyang.
North Korean dictator’s trip to China came as Pyongyang prepares for a possible summit with US president Donald Trump to defuse a crisis over its nuclear programme after months of heightened tensions, which saw Mr Kim and Mr Trump engage in a fiery war of words.
During Mr Trump’s first year in office, Pyongyang raced ahead with tests of a hydrogen bomb and missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. However, North Korea’s charm offensive at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, last month led to direct talks with South Koreans and the extraordinary offer to meet directly with the US president. In late April Mr Kim is due to hold a summit meeting with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in in the demilitarised zone between their two nations, to be followed by the one with Mr Trump, which could come as early as May (Mr Moon is keen to revive economic relations and people-to-people contacts). China’s primary motivation for the meeting with Mr Kim, therefore, was to re-insert itself in the diplomatic process.
Washington’s strategy is aimed at forcing Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear weapons. To do this, Mr Trump has exerted maximum diplomatic and economic pressure on the Kim regime, but also resorted to frequent threats of military action. While China supports international efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons (North Korea is believed to maintain about 60 nuclear weapons; Pyongyang declared its nuclear programme complete late last year), it also doesn’t want to press the North hard enough to risk a collapse of the regime.
China has been North Korea’s main trade partner and its key diplomatic defender, but relations between the two have been severely strained in recent years by Pyongyang’s testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. That prompted Beijing, evidently frustrated by Mr Kim’s provocative behaviour, to back multiple UN sanctions against North Korea, which cut exports of everything from coal to seafood while also curbing oil imports. Mr Kim’s visit to Beijing was an attempt to reassure himself that his country’s most important ally remains behind him.
China’s news agency quoted Mr Kim saying that he was committed to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula but only if South Korea and the US would build a “peaceful and stable atmosphere”. “Peaceful and stable atmosphere” means the withdrawal of American troops from the peninsula and the end of America’s military alliance with Seoul and Tokyo, which is highly unlikely.
John Bolton, Mr Trump’s new national security adviser, is a noted hawk on North Korea. He has openly advocated a military option if de-nuclearisation cannot be achieved by peaceful means.
Photo: jennybento
