WASHINGTON--U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday injected fresh urgency into attempts to engage North Korea in dialogue over its nuclear weapons, with Biden saying he would meet its leader Kim Jong Un under the right conditions.
Biden and Moon said the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is their goal, with Biden stressing he was "under no illusions" about the difficulty of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenals after his predecessors failed.
"We both are deeply concerned about the situation," Biden said at a joint news conference, adding that he and Moon shared a willingness to engage diplomatically with the North and "to take pragmatic steps to reduce tensions."
North Korea has rebuffed U.S. entreaties for diplomacy since Biden took over from Donald Trump, who had three summits with Kim and famously exchanged "beautiful letters" with the third-generation leader. Kim refused to give up his nuclear weapons but did impose a freeze on testing them. He has not tested a nuclear bomb nor launched an inter-continental ballistic missile since 2017, although experts believe his arsenal has steadily grown.
Biden said he would be willing to meet Kim under the right conditions - if he agreed to discuss his nuclear programme and that his advisers first met with their North Korean counterparts to lay the groundwork. "I would not do what had been done in the recent past; I would not give him all he's looking for - international recognition as legitimate and allow him to move in the direction of appearing to be more ... serious about what he wasn't at all serious about."
Biden's comments appeared to reflect a shift in his thinking given that the White House said in March it was not his intention to meet with Kim. Biden appointed veteran State Department official Sung Kim as special U.S. envoy for North Korea.
South Korea had been pushing for the appointment of an envoy, and Moon, for whom engagement with North Korea is a legacy issue before he leaves office next year, said Sung Kim would help explore whether North Korea is willing to engage diplomatically. He said he expected a positive response.
Sung Kim is a Korean-American diplomat who served as special envoy for North Korea under President Barack Obama and helped set up Trump's summits with Kim Jong Un. Jenny Town of 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea project, said Sung Kim's appointment was positive after the administration had signalled it was in no hurry to fill the post.
However, it has given no indication of what concessions it might offer to bring about talks. A joint summit statement called for full implementation of international sanctions Pyongyang wants lifted.
"The problem has been that the administration has only talked about denuclearization and continues to characterize any interactions with North Korea as nuclear negotiations," Town said. "So it's still a tough sell to get the North Koreans back to the table, but obviously Moon is going to push very hard."
Biden's administration undertook a broad review of North Korea policy but has said little about what its new policy entails, beyond that it would not be Obama's approach of refusing to engage North Korea, or Trump's flashy summitry.
