President-elect Donald Trump’s team is discussing holding direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to two people familiar with the matter, in hopes the latest diplomatic effort could reduce the risks of armed conflict.
Many in Trump’s team now see a direct approach from Trump to advance the already existing relationship as the most likely to break the sourness in relations with Kim after two years of trade insults. and what Trump called a “beautiful” letter in an unprecedented diplomatic effort. During his first term in office, the people said.
Sources said the policy discussions are fluid and no final decision has been taken by the President-elect.
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
It is not clear what reply Kim will give to Trump. The North Koreans have ignored four years of U.S. President Joe Biden’s efforts to restart talks without preconditions, and Kim is emboldened by an expanded missile arsenal and a much closer relationship with Russia.
“We have already gone as far as we can in negotiations with the United States,” Kim said in a speech at a Pyongyang military exhibition last week, according to state media.
During his 2017–2021 presidency, Trump held three meetings with Kim in Singapore, Hanoi and on the Korean border, the first time a sitting US president had visited the country.
Their diplomacy yielded no concrete results, with Trump even describing their conversation as “falling in love.” The US called on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, while Kim sought relief from blanket sanctions, then issued new threats.
It was not clear what the outcome of the new diplomatic effort would be. Trump’s initial goal will be to reestablish basic engagement, but further policy goals or an exact timetable have not been set, the people said. And according to a person briefed on the transition’s thinking, the issue may take a back seat to more serious foreign policy concerns in the Middle East and Ukraine.
North Korean state media has yet to publicly mention Trump’s re-election, and Kim said this month that the United States was escalating tensions and provocations, raising the risk of nuclear war.
Trump and some of his aides left office with the belief that a direct approach was Washington’s best shot at influencing behavior north of the Demilitarized Zone, which has divided the Korean Peninsula for seven decades. The war between the countries technically never ended even after the guns fell silent.
On Friday, Trump nominated former State Department official Alex Wong, one of the people who implemented North Korea’s initial strategy, as his deputy national security adviser. “As Deputy Special Representative for North Korea, he helped facilitate my summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un,” Trump said in a statement.
tension increased
Trump is expected to inherit a tense situation with Kim when he returns to the White House in January, as he did in 2017, in an environment aides expect the incoming president to confront head-on.
“My experience with President Trump is that he is more likely to be willing to engage directly,” U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty, a Trump ally, said in an interview with Reuters earlier this year. “I am optimistic that if talks were resumed we could see an improvement in the relationship and perhaps even a different posture adopted by Kim Jong Un.”
Washington has a documented record of concerns over the country’s growing nuclear weapons and missile programs, its increasingly hostile rhetoric toward South Korea and its close cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These topics are expected to be covered in a Biden administration transition briefing for Trump allies, according to a US official. The Trump team has not yet signed transition agreements, which could limit the scope of some of these briefings.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Of particular concern to Washington are the prospects for 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.
Citing researchers at a US-based think tank who examined satellite images, Reuters reported on Monday that North Korea is expanding a major weapons manufacturing complex, a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine. Assembles the missile.
U.S. officials said these factors increase the risk of conflict between the United States and its allies, including several nuclear-armed countries in Europe or Asia, including South Korea and Japan.
US troops are deployed throughout the region to deter North Korea, and Trump has insisted that US allies share more of the cost of those deployments.
In his last meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Peru earlier this month, Biden asked Beijing to use its influence to rein in North Korea.
Opportunities for China and the US to work together may be limited as Trump has vowed to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods and has aligned his inner circle with China hard-liners, such as Marcos as secretary of state. Rubio and Representative Mike Waltz as national security adviser.
Trump said last month that the two countries “would have had a nuclear war that would have killed millions of people,” but that he stopped it thanks to his relationship with the North’s leader.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
