TOKYO — North Korea and the United States will resume negotiations Saturday, marking the first official talks between the two sides since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in June, the North Korean government announced Tuesday.
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus later told reporters that officials from the two countries plan to meet “within the next week.”
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said the two countries “agreed to hold a working-level discussion on October 5th, following a preliminary contact on the 4th,” according to a statement carried by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“I expect the working-level talks to accelerate positive developments in DPRK-U.S. relations,” Choe said, using the initials of her country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Our representatives are ready to attend the working-level talks with the United States.”
Choe’s statement did not say where the talks would take place.
Negotiations between the two countries’ diplomats have been frozen since the breakdown of a summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February. Another meeting between the two leaders at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas in June was supposed to lead to a resumption of negotiations, but the stalemate persisted until now.
Meanwhile, North Korea has conducted short-range ballistic missile tests, while complaining bitterly about joint military exercises carried out by the United States and South Korea.
On Monday, North Korea blamed the stalling of the dialogue on Washington and Seoul, accusing them of failing to keep their promises.
North Korean Ambassador Kim Song told the U.N. General Assembly that it was up to the United States whether negotiations “will become a window of opportunity or an occasion that will hasten the crisis.”
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula has not come out of the vicious cycle of increased tension, which is entirely attributable to the political and military provocations perpetrated by the U.S.,” the ambassador said.
North Korea has also insisted that talks will succeed only if the United States takes a different approach from the one it took in Hanoi, but it has been careful not to criticize Trump directly.
Indeed, the North Korean Foreign Ministry also said last week that Trump is “different from his predecessors in political sense and decision” and that it hoped he would make a wise and bold decision.
Experts said Pyongyang saw a potential window of opportunity for progress under Trump.
“As this year draws to an end, Kim Jong Un is trying to speed up the nuclear talks,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“Next year, the United States will have its presidential election, and South Korea will have a legislative election. Kim’s strategy could be to have his third meeting with President Trump before next year to get the best result ahead of the elections race.”
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the removal of John Bolton as White House national security adviser last month might have encouraged North Korea to think it could win sanctions relief by making a deal with Trump. Bolton had consistently held a hard line on North Korea.
In return, Easley said, Pyongyang might offer concessions, such as an unverifiable freeze on nuclear weapons production, that Trump could present as a symbolic victory.
“With Bolton out of the administration and the U.S. Congress talking impeachment, Pyongyang sees an opportunity,” Easley said.
On Monday, in his first public remarks since being fired, Bolton called North Korea’s nuclear weapons a “grave and growing threat” and said he did not believe Kim would give them up voluntarily.
Min Joo Kim reported from Seoul.
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Signs of progress between Trump and North Korea are hard to find
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