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Park Chan-kyong

At first glance, Kim Yo-jong’s latest message to Washington looked like a rebuff to US President Donald Trump’s insistence that he would meet her brother Kim Jong-un later this year.
But analysts said the North Korean leader’s powerful sister stopped well short of shutting down Trump’s outreach, using a carefully worded statement to leave room for renewed summit diplomacy while making clear that Pyongyang intended to set the terms for any return to dialogue.
In her statement, released by North Korean state media late on Wednesday, Kim Yo-jong dismissed Trump’s decision to scale back joint US-South Korea military exercises as meaningless, demanded a complete halt to the drills and warned again against what Pyongyang calls Washington’s “hostile” policy.
Yet the statement also contained openings that appeared calibrated for Trump.
Kim Yo-jong neither confirmed nor denied Trump’s claim that the North Korean leader had responded positively to his latest overture, saying only that it was “perhaps” the one foreign policy matter involving the country’s “supreme leadership” about which she was not informed.
She also emphasised that Pyongyang had repeatedly said Kim Jong-un held “personally good memories and feelings” towards Trump.

The ambiguity allowed North Korea to avoid embarrassing Trump while reaffirming the “excellent” personal relationship between the two leaders, analysts said, suggesting Pyongyang aimed to keep the door open to talks, but only if Washington accepted a much higher entry price.
That could include US acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, the exclusion of denuclearisation from the immediate agenda and a negotiating framework shaped by Pyongyang rather than Washington, they said.
Trump, meanwhile, appeared to hint that North Korea’s denuclearisation could be put on the back burner during the initial stage of any renewed negotiations.
Shortly after the statement was released, Trump said he would meet Kim Jong-un later this year, noting that North Korea had 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons.
His remarks came amid reports that he was pushing for a meeting during his next trip to Asia, likely to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit scheduled to take place in Shenzhen, China, in November.
“Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he expected to meet Kim Jong-un later this year.
On whether he was exchanging written letters with Kim Jong-un, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that.”
Trump held three ultimately fruitless bilateral meetings with Kim Jong-un during his first term: in Singapore in June 2018, Hanoi in February 2019 and the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019.
Observers say Trump’s renewed attention on North Korea could reflect his eagerness to score a major foreign policy coup, potentially helping divert attention from the protracted war against Iran, which has tarnished his image as a peacemaker and contributed to inflation ahead of the US midterm elections in November.
But it remains to be seen whether Kim Jong-un will respond to Trump’s overtures, given North Korea’s growing ties with Russia and China, which have reduced Pyongyang’s need for help from the United States, analysts say.

“By publicly reaffirming the ‘excellent relationship’ between Kim and Trump, Pyongyang is keeping the door open to dialogue,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
Even if Trump exaggerated Kim Jong-un’s alleged positive response to a meeting, Pyongyang’s statement showed how it was avoiding embarrassing the US leader, Hong added. “Taken more positively, the message could be interpreted as: ‘We have received no message, so if you are serious, then send a genuine one.’”
Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said Pyongyang was raising all the security issues it considered relevant to its interests, thereby increasing the threshold for dialogue.
The statement also widened the security agenda beyond Washington, including Japan’s recent military moves and South Korea’s development of nuclear-powered submarines.
Kim Yo-jong on Wednesday issued a direct threat against Japan, warning that if it “attempts to make the wrong choice, it will now face an immediate and unsurvivable, annihilating strike”.
The key takeaway from her message, Yang noted, was not whether communication had taken place regarding a possible resumption of Trump-Kim summit diplomacy, but rather North Korea’s emphasis on the preconditions for restarting dialogue.
“Pyongyang is arguing that merely scaling back US-South Korea joint military exercises is not enough and that Washington must fundamentally abandon its hostile policy towards North Korea,” Yang said.
“By rejecting reports of additional North Korean troop deployments to Russia, while also raising concerns over Japan’s recent military moves and South Korea’s development of nuclear-powered submarines, North Korea appears to be seeking to raise the threshold for resuming US-North Korea dialogue.”
The timing of the statement, coinciding with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Seoul, also appeared intended to demonstrate Pyongyang’s determination to maintain the initiative on Korean peninsula issues and signal to both China and Russia that North Korea would not recklessly rush into dialogue with the US, Yang noted.


For Yu Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses, the statement suggests Pyongyang continues to see value in the personal rapport between Kim Jong-un and Trump even as it dismisses the significance of scaling back military exercises.
“This could be an attempt by Pyongyang to separate Trump from broader US policy towards North Korea, keeping open the possibility of resuming their summit diplomacy,” Yu said.
Professor Lim Eul-chul of the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University said Pyongyang was well aware that Trump was in urgent need of a fresh diplomatic coup ahead of the November midterm elections.
“Kim Jong-un also understands that even if another summit with Trump does take place, the talks could be derailed at any time due to opposition in Washington or Trump’s own whims,” Lim said.
“Nevertheless, from North Korea’s perspective, the uncertainty created by Trump represents not only a threat but also a strategic opportunity.”
That could allow Kim to maximise his leverage until Trump came forward with sufficiently dramatic concessions, potentially including a permanent end to US-South Korea military exercises and explicit public recognition of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, Lim said.
Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University, agreed that Pyongyang was unlikely to agree to talks any time soon.
With North Korea benefiting financially from helping Russia in the Ukraine war and receiving Moscow’s blessing for its de facto nuclear status, Easley said all these gave Kim Jong-un “leverage to demand greater support from Beijing”.
While the North Korean leader might seek “further economic and reputational benefits” from Washington, Easley predicted this would occur after the US midterm elections when Trump “is expected to be in a weaker domestic political position and in search of headline-grabbing foreign policies”.


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Analysts say Kim Yo-jong’s statement reflects North Korea’s emphasis on setting the preconditions for resuming dialogue


Analysts say Kim Yo-jong’s statement reflects North Korea’s emphasis on setting the preconditions for resuming dialogue.


Why North Korea is ‘keeping the door open for dialogue’ with Trump

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Analysts say Kim Yo-jong’s statement reflects North Korea’s emphasis on setting the preconditions for resuming dialogue

Analysts say Kim Yo-jong’s statement reflects North Korea’s emphasis on setting the preconditions for resuming dialogue