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January 22, 2020


Diplomacy with North Korea: A Status Report


Since President Donald Trump first agreed in March 2018
to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to
discuss North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the
Trump Administration has emphasized the importance of
developing a strong leader-to-leader relationship. The
strategy appears to presume that this approach will produce
more results than the working-group negotiations employed
by previous administrations. Trump and Kim have held
three meetings: in Singapore (June 2018); in Hanoi
(February 2019); and in Panmunjom (June 2019). Kim also
has met on five occasions with Chinese President Xi
Jinping, three with South Korean President Moon Jae-in,
and one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, none of
whom he had met before 2018.

Overall, these diplomatic activities reduced tensions on the
Korean Peninsula in 2018 and 2019. Trump and Kim have
developed a personal relationship that Trump says could
produce a breakthrough. Kim has pledged to denuclearize,
and has maintained a moratorium on nuclear tests and
intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

From the outset of the U.S.-North Korean rapprochement in
2018, critics of the Trump Administration's approach
pointed out that Kim's public denuclearization promises
have been conditional and vague. Moreover, North Korea
appears to be enhancing its military capabilities. In addition
to continuing to produce nuclear material, between May
and December 2019 North Korea conducted over a dozen
multiple short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) tests, in
violation of United Nations (U.N.) prohibitions, possibly
advancing its solid fuel and guidance systems and
developing capabilities to thwart short-range missile
defense systems.


As of January 2020, aside from a one-hour June 2019
meeting between Trump and Kim in Panmunjom, the
United States and North Korea (officially known as the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK) have
held one round of official talks since the Hanoi summit.
U.S. officials say their North Korean counterparts have
refused to engage in additional negotiations.

In late December 2019, Kim announced that, due to the
United States' policies to completely strangle and stifle the
DPRK, there is no ground for North Korea to continue
to maintain its nuclear and missile testing moratorium. Kim


criticized the United States' continuation of sanctions, joint
military exercises with South Korea, and shipments of
advanced military equipment to South Korea. Kim warned
that the world will witness a new strategic weapon to be
possessed by the DPRK in the near future.

The U.S. and DPRK positions appear to be no closer than
they were during the February 2019 Hanoi summit, which
ended without an agreement due to differences over the
scope and sequencing of DPRK denuclearization measures
in exchange for sanctions relief. The two countries have not
agreed on denuclearization steps; whether an agreement
will include DPRK missiles, chemical weapons, biological
weapons, and/or conventional forces; and the mechanisms
for verifying any agreement, including inspection and
monitoring arrangements. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and,
to a lesser extent, South Korea have called for a relaxation
of sanctions on North Korea, including Beijing and
Moscow's December 2019 proposal to lift several
categories of U.N. sanctions. The Trump Administration
rejected the proposals as premature.

If talks restart, U.S. negotiators and Members of Congress
conducting oversight would face the question of whether
to aim for incremental dismantlement of North Korea's
nuclear program in step with gradual sanctions relief, or to
try for a big deal and demand that complete
denuclearization precede full sanctions relief. A related
question is whether the Administration would accept partial
denuclearization as an outcome of talks. The possibility of
full sanctions relief is complicated by the other reasons the
United States has leveled sanctions on North Korea,
including human rights abuses, money laundering, illicit
weapons trade, international terrorism, and offensive cyber
operations.
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   Kim in 2018 publicly agreed to work toward complete
   denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, pledging
   permanent dismantlement of nuclear facilities in
   Yongbyon    an important nuclear site as the United
   States takes corresponding measures. He promised to
   dismantle North Korea's Sohae missile and satellite
   launch site in the presence of international inspectors,
   and agreed to allow experts to visit a nuclear test site
   that North Korea says it has disabled.


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