North Korea ‘squandered’ chance to improve relations under Trump: US envoy

US deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun said Pyongyang focused on ‘obstacles to negotiations’ and he was disappointed talks failed

He defended US President Donald Trump’s ‘ambitious and bold’ decision to focus on top-level diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

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North Korea's Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump meet on June 30, 2019. The US special envoy for North Korea has urged the North Korean leader to return to talks. Photo: TNS

Published: 3:26pm, 10 Dec 2020Updated: 3:29pm, 10 Dec 2020

Pyongyang squandered an opportunity to fundamentally reinvent its relationship with the United States during Donald Trump’s presidency, Washington’s top North Korea envoy said on Thursday, adding he will urge his successors to continue engagement.

Speaking to a think tank in Seoul during a visit for meetings with South Korean security officials, US deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun admitted he was disappointed denuclearisation negotiations had stalled and that more progress was not made during his time leading those efforts.

“Regrettably, much opportunity has been squandered by our North Korean counterparts over the past two years, who too often have devoted themselves to the search for obstacles to negotiations instead of seizing opportunities for engagement,” he said.

Still, he defended Trump’s “ambitious and bold” decision to focus on top-level diplomacy with leader Kim Jong-un, and to eschew small steps in favour of seeking a major agreement under which North Korea would surrender its nuclear weapons and the two sides would normalise relations.

“This vision was a bold one, and it made the many advocates of incrementalism uncomfortable,” Biegun said, even if the talks had “yet to deliver the success we hoped for”.

“You might wonder if I am disappointed that we did not accomplish more over the past two years. I am,” he added.

After trading insults and nuclear threats that had pushed their countries to the brink of war, Trump and Kim met for the first time in Singapore in 2018, where they signed a general declaration calling for denuclearisation and new relations between the two old adversaries.

The US insisted from the beginning that Pyongyang must be “ready to make progress on denuclearisation” for economic sanctions relief and security guarantees, Biegun said.