WASHINGTON (Yonhap) ― The weekend visit to the South by a group of three top North Korean officials might not have come as a surprise to the United States because officials from Seoul have suggested to Washington that they are trying to make progress with Pyongyang, an expert said Monday.
The three officials ― Hwang Pyong-so, Choe Ryong-hae and Kim Yang-gon ― made a one-day surprise trip to the South’s western city of Incheon on Saturday to attend the closing ceremony of the Asian Games, where North Korean athletes competed.
It was unprecedented for such high-level North Korean officials to travel together to the South.
“In the run-up to Saturday’s surprise, ROK officials from the foreign ministry and Blue House were in Washington the weeks prior suggesting quietly that Seoul was working patiently to make some progress with the North,” said Victor Cha, chief analyst on Korea at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a report.
“So, it is unlikely that the Obama administration was caught off-guard.”
Cha was apparently referring to recent trips to Washington by Seoul’s national security adviser, Kim Kwan-jin, and chief nuclear envoy, Hwang Joon-kook. Kim held meetings with leading U.S. security experts on Korea, including Cha, while in Washington.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a regular press briefing that the U.S. was “in close consultation with the government of the Republic of Korea as the visit was happening.”
She also reiterated that the U.S. supports improved inter-Korean relations.
Psaki was referring apparently to the fact that Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel and Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear were in Seoul during the North Koreans’ trip. Asked if the U.S. was informed of the North Koreans’ visit, she said she will check.
The North Korean officials held meetings with South Korean officials, including Prime Minister Chung Hong-won, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and National Security Adviser Kim, and agreed to hold a new round of high-level inter-Korean talks between late October and early November.
Cha said that the most likely result of the upcoming talks will be an agreement on another set of reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and a possible agreement on bringing the stalled tourism project to the North’s Mount Geumgangsan back on track.
“These may seem like small steps but they fit well with Park’s trustpolitik policy for North Korea, which focuses on small gestures and incremental steps to build trust and confidence for larger accomplishments down the road,” he said, referring to President Park Geun-hye.
The expert cautioned, however, that there is no guarantee the current temporary thaw would last.
He said that Saturday’s delegation was the highest ranking since 2009, when Kim Yang-gon and Kim Ki-nam, then a secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, came to Seoul for late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s funeral and met with President Lee Myung-bak.
“But this did not lead to any lasting improvement in relations,” Cha said. “Moreover, CSIS Korea Chair longitudinal studies find that there has been no significant correlation over the last thirty years between North-South talks and the cessation of military provocations by the DPRK” (North Korea).
