Two former spymasters will meet this week in New York to try to jump-start the on-again, off-again summit next month between President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Kim Yong Chol, the right-hand man to the North Korean leader who once headed the regime’s version of the CIA, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the director of the CIA, will huddle in New York City, the White House and State Department said, without providing any information about where or exactly when.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that Pompeo would travel to New York on Wednesday and return to Washington on Thursday.
Kim Yong Chol, the vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, would be the most senior North Korean envoy to meet with a top US official since Vice Chairman Jo Myong Rok met with former President Clinton in the White House in 2000.
Pompeo has met Kim Yong Chol twice during his two visits with President Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang in April and earlier this month.
Nauert said Kim Yong Chol got a waiver to enter the United States because he has been blacklisted by the US and South Korea in 2010 and 2016 for taking part in North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs.
“There’s an inter-agency process that allows for this official travel to take place,” she said, adding that Kim Yong-chol would need another waiver to travel outside of New York.
Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations. North Korea has a mission in New York for its United Nations delegation but doesn’t have an embassy in Washington.
Besides Kim Yong-chol’s involvement in North Korea’s weapons programs, US intelligence agencies believe he was behind the 2014 hacking of Sony Pictures in retaliation for the Seth Rogen comedy “The Interview,” which satirized the North Korean leader.
South Korean officials also claim he was responsible for the sinking of one of their ships, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors, in March 2010.
As the two former top spooks readied for their meeting, the White House said Trump continues to “actively prepare” for the hoped-for Singapore summit on June 12 and will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House on June 7 as part of the lead-up to that meeting.
“Since the president’s May 24 letter . . . the North Koreans have been engaging,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday, referring to Trump’s letter to Kim last Thursday, in which the commander in chief abruptly canceled the meeting over Pyongyang’s hostile rhetoric toward the US, including one official calling Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy.”
“The United States continues to actively prepare for President Trump’s expected summit with leader Kim,” Sanders said.
Trump said his action led the reclusive regime to back off and return to the negotiating track.
A US delegation headed up by Sung Kim, the former US ambassador to South Korea, crossed into North Korea on Sunday to meet with officials of Kim’s government at the border village of Panmunjom.
More meetings are expected this week, Sanders said. At the same time, a “pre-advance” team led by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin is in Singapore ironing out logistics for the talks, she noted.
And National Security Adviser John Bolton has been in contact with his counterparts in South Korea and Japan for the past couple weeks, Sanders said.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Kim expressed a willingness to denuclearize and was committed to meeting with Trump.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends” that the president had “sent over two delegations — one for logistics and one for more diplomatic purposes that are on the ground making the logistic preparations for June 12.
“But, as the president has said,” she added, “if it doesn’t happen June 12, it could happen thereafter.”