Seoul: South Korea hopes that U.S. President Donald Trump's leadership could help break the impasse in the long-stalled nuclear talks with North Korea, its top diplomat said, as the new Lee Jae Myung government seeks to resume dialogue with Pyongyang. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun made these remarks at a press conference, noting that he had conveyed this view to the U.S. side during his visit to Washington earlier this month.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Cho stated, "I told them we expect President Trump's leadership to produce something new from the current situation, and I believe the U.S. side received it quite favorably," when asked about any progress in the stalled talks. Cho's comments came despite North Korea's repeated rejection of reconciliation overtures from Seoul and its insistence that talks with Washington will only resume if based on "new thinking" that does not include denuclearization.
On Thursday, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korea's leader, dismissed Seoul's rapprochement efforts as a "pipe dream." She claimed that Pyongyang has never dismantled propaganda loudspeakers targeting South Korea in border areas, as the Lee government claims, and has no intention of doing so. Kim also criticized the recent postponement of some joint military drills between South Korea and the United States, calling it a "foolish calculation" to think the North would respond to such gestures.
Cho mentioned that Seoul has been closely coordinating with Washington regarding a potential revival of dialogue with Pyongyang, though he declined to elaborate further. "North Korea would want to talk with the U.S. as a nuclear-armed state, but the U.S.' position is that the North cannot have nuclear weapons. So it's going to take a lot of back-and-forth (before any breakthrough)," he said.
When asked about the possibility of Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea in late October, Cho refrained from answering directly but did not completely rule out hope. "Diplomacy should fail if it is always crafted solely based on hope, but I should also say that we should never give it up," he concluded.