Tillerson sacking signals tougher North Korea policy
By Kim Rahn
Rex Tillerson
The U.S.’s North Korea policy may get tougher following President Donald Trump’s sacking of dovish Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replacing him with the hawkish CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Some experts forecast confusion in the U.S.’s foreign and security policies during the transition period ahead of possible historic Washington-Pyongyang talks, while others predict no major changes as Pompeo has been working to create the current conciliatory mood along with his South Korean counterparts.
Trump made the surprise announcement of Tillerson’s ouster via Twitter, Tuesday. Tillerson has been one of the representative dovish figures in the administration, and has often clashed with Trump over North Korea issues. When he sought dialogue with Pyongyang, Trump said he was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” (North Korean leader Kim Jong-un).
Pompeo, on the contrary, has been tough on Pyongyang, often mentioning regime change there and the use of military options, being skeptical of achieving denuclearization of the North through dialogue.
“Without nuclear envoy Joseph Yun and Secretary Tillerson, there’s no one in the Trump administration who would talk with the North,” Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, said.
“The personnel change may not hinder the planned Washington-Pyongyang talks from being held. But removing those advocating dialogue with North Korea could cause instability in U.S.-North Korea relations.”
Mike Pompeo
However, others say Trump may have selected Pompeo for successful talks with North Korea, considering he is a loyalist and has played a key role in creating the current mood for dialogue.
Since early this year, Pompeo and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Suh Hoon have had close communications, and even mediated a meeting between U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister during their stays in Seoul in early February, although this was cancelled at the last minute.
“The current situation is a result of tripartite talks among North Korea’s United Front Department, South Korea’s NIS and the U.S.’s CIA,” Kim Yeon-chul, a professor at Inje University, wrote on Facebook.
“It seems Trump is very willing to have negotiations with the North. Naming Pompeo means ‘You, Pompeo, who created the current situation, prepare for the talks with North Korea,’” he said.
Foreign ministry officials here also said cautiously there would be no major changes in the U.S.’s North Korea policy and cooperation between Seoul and Washington, considering Pompeo has been well aware of the situation surrounding the Korean Peninsula, regardless of whether he is hawkish or dovish.
“Although Pompeo is hawkish, he has good chemistry with President Trump, reportedly having private talks with him almost every day. So some say he can be a better counterpart for us than Tillerson,” a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
Some others predict Pompeo could show his hard-line stance fully if things go wrong. “If the Trump-Kim summit were to come to an actionable agreement, and if that agreement were to fail, or if a summit prior to that were to fail, Pompeo would be more inclined to take a more hawkish position, up to and including a kinetic action on North Korea,” Mason Richey, a professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, told the Wall Street Journal.