US ready for talks ‘anytime, anywhere’ with North Korea: Biden’s nuclear envoy
- Sung Kim, after discussions with his counterparts from Seoul and Tokyo, says Washington hopes Pyongyang will respond positively to its outreach
- Their meeting came days after Kim Jong-un said North Korea was ready for ‘both dialogue and confrontation’
Sung Kim, the US special representative for North Korea – speaking after discussions in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk and Japan’s nuclear envoy Takehiro Funakoshi – said the Biden administration’s policy called for “a calibrated, practical approach” that included possible diplomacy with Pyongyang.
“We continue to hope [North Korea] will respond positively to our outreach and our offer to meet anywhere, anytime, without preconditions,” he said, adding that the US would press ahead with United Nations sanctions put in place to punish North Korea for its tests of nuclear devices and missiles that could carry warheads to the US mainland.
North Korea must prepare for ‘dialogue and confrontation’ with US, Kim Jong-un says
Their meeting was the first among the envoys since Biden took office. It came just days after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un said the country was ready for “both dialogue and confrontation”, offering the highest-level opening for discussions since Biden replaced Donald Trump, who met Kim three times.
But Kim tempered his comments at a high-level meeting of his ruling party with a call to “get fully prepared for confrontation in order to protect the dignity of our state and its interests”. The words served as a reminder to Washington of the security risks posed by his nuclear arsenal, which only grew larger during Trump’s term in office.
The previous major statement from North Korea on dialogue came in March when First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui called US attempts for communication a “time-delaying trick”.
“We took note of Chairman Kim’s recent statement, referring to both dialogue and confrontation. We will be prepared for either,” said Sung Kim, a career diplomat who has worked on North Korea-related issues under Republican and Democratic administrations, ahead of the three-way meeting. The US envoy later reaffirmed that Seoul and Washington would pursue the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula through diplomacy and dialogue.