US envoy Sung Kim arrives in South Korea amid North’s anger over military drills
- The US and South Korea began a nine-day joint military exercise earlier this week, which was slammed by Pyongyang
- Biden’s special envoy Sung Kim will meet his South Korean counterpart on Monday and also plans to hold separate talks with Russia’s deputy foreign minister in Seoul
Sung Kim’s visit comes amid fresh tensions over ongoing US-South Korean military exercises, which the North has described as an invasion rehearsal and led to it threatening unspecified countermeasures that would leave the allies facing a “security crisis”.
Kim will meet his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk on Monday and also plans to hold separate talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov, who also arrived in Seoul on Saturday.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry and the US State Department did not immediately mention any plan for three-way talks with the Russians.
The department said Kim’s meetings with Noh and South Korean officials were aimed at discussing the “situation on the Korean peninsula and continue close coordination on the way forward”.
“I’m looking forward to very close consultations with our Korean government colleagues,” Kim told reporters at the Incheon international airport.
There have been no known missile tests by North Korea since the start of the drills, although South Korean military officials have said the North is currently staging its own summertime exercises.
North Korea has long bristled at the US-South Korea military drills, which the allies say are routine and defensive in nature, and often responds to them with its own weapons demonstrations.
The allies in the past few years have cancelled or downsized some of their joint training to provide space for diplomacy or because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some analysts say the North’s threat may signal a resumption of its weapons testing activities.
North Korea ended a year-long pause in ballistic tests in March by firing two short-range missiles into the sea, continuing a tradition of testing new US administrations with weapons demonstrations aimed at measuring Washington’s response and wresting concessions.
But there have not been any known test launches since then as Kim focused national efforts on fending off the coronavirus and salvaging a broken economy damaged further by pandemic border closures.
Kim has since pledged to bolster his country’s nuclear deterrent while urging his people to stay resilient in a struggle for economic self-dependence in the face of US pressure. His government has so far rejected the Biden administration’s overtures for talks, demanding that Washington abandon its “hostile” policies first.
The North’s state media said on Saturday that Kim inspected a construction site for new riverside apartments in Pyongyang and described the project as crucial in making the capital “more modern and civilised”.
The report did not mention any comments towards the US or South Korea.
