South offers to mediate US-NK standoff
South Korean President Moon Jae-in / Yonhap
By Kim Rahn
Seoul will play a more active role in helping Washington and Pyongyang narrow the gap for their denuclearization talks, after North Korea threatened to cancel the planned summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump, Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday.
In a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at the presidential office, ranking security and diplomatic officials here said they would continue their contacts with the North through various channels to resolve the abrupt standoff in the nuclear disarmament negotiations.
The meeting was convened a day after Pyongyang suddenly cancelled high-level talks with Seoul, citing ongoing South Korea-U.S. joint air force exercises, and threatened to reconsider the Kim-Trump summit if Washington forces it to unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons.
“The NSC members pledged to help the U.S. and North Korea coordinate their stances through various channels, so the upcoming Washington-Pyongyang summit can be held successfully based on mutual respect,” Cheong Wa Dae said in a press release.
Regarding the “mutual respect,” a Cheong Wa Dae official said it seems North Korea and the U.S. have had some disagreements while preparing for the summit. “To resolve the disagreements, they need to put themselves in each other's shoes and try to understand each other,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
“Watching the responses from the U.S. and North Korea, we believe both countries are taking sincere and serious attitudes (to see that the summit takes place).”
He said President Moon Jae-in would play a more active role as a broker. “In the upcoming summit with Trump next week, Moon will deliver North Korea's stance to Trump. And Seoul will also deliver Washington's stance to Pyongyang, helping the two nations narrow the gap and reach an agreement.”
The official did not elaborate what the “disagreements” were between the North and the U.S. but it is presumed to be North Korea's discontent at some U.S. hawkish officials' suggestion of a Libyan-style denuclearization model. Under this, Libya transferred its fissile materials to the U.S. for dismantling.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said in a statement Wednesday that ranking officials at the White House, including Trump's top security adviser John Bolton, talk about “denuclearization first and rewards later” and “a Libyan model,” adding such remarks were “thoughtless words that provoke its counterpart.”
Following the statement, Washington seemed to downplay Bolton's stance, saying it has never decided to apply the Libyan model to North Korea.
“I haven't seen that (Libyan model) as part of any discussions so I'm not aware that that's a model that we're using,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said. “There's not a cookie-cutter model on how this would work.”
She said it would be the “President Trump model.”
On this issue, National Security Office chief Chung Eui-yong and Bolton had a phone conversation Wednesday and talked about responses to North Korea's sudden change of attitude.
The NSC members also discussed the North's sudden cancellation of the high-level inter-Korean talks. “They reaffirmed that the Panmunjeom Declaration, signed at the inter-Korean summit, should be implemented without setbacks, and decided to keep talking with the North to resume the high-level talks as soon as possible,” according to the press release.
They also agreed to make efforts to have North Korea-related events carried out as planned, such as media coverage of the North's dismantlement of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and a joint celebration of the June 15 Inter-Korean Declaration.