Trump: Chance Kim swayed

N. Korean’s trip to China raises hopes

Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un review an honor guard Monday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un review an honor guard Monday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Wednesday that there is "a good chance" that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will "do what is right for his people and for humanity" and make moves toward peace.

In a pair of morning tweets, Trump said he received a message from Chinese President Xi Jinping that a meeting Xi had with Kim this week "went very well."

Trump said that according to Xi, the North Korean leader "looks forward" to meeting the American president. The White House has said Trump plans to meet Kim by May amid nuclear tensions between the two nations.

Trump had agreed to the talks after South Korean officials relayed that Kim was committed to ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons and was willing to halt nuclear and missile tests.

In the meantime, Trump said, "unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!" The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on companies across the globe to punish illicit trade with North Korea.

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"For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility," Trump tweeted Wednesday. "Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!"

Kim, making what was believed to be his first foreign trip as leader, arrived in Beijing aboard a slow armored train Monday and met with Xi and other senior Chinese officials, according to North Korean and Chinese media.

U.S. State Department spokesman Heather Nauert called Kim's visit to China "an unprecedented, historic step in the right direction," and she credited Trump with facilitating the conditions for the North's apparent willingness to discuss giving up its nuclear program.

"It is also evidence that POTUS' maximum pressure campaign is working. We look forward to sitting down with Kim Jong Un to talk about a better future for his people," Nauert wrote on Twitter.

However, it remains unclear if there has been direct communication between Washington and Pyongyang on the planned Trump-Kim summit and under what conditions North Korea would agree to give up the nuclear arsenal it has spent decades building.

According to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Kim told Xi this week that North Korea is willing to have dialogue with the United States and hold a summit of the two countries. Kim also said the issue of denuclearization can be resolved if South Korea and the U.S. take "progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace."

The "unofficial" visit, which was not announced until after Kim left China, came just weeks before the North Korean leader is scheduled to see South Korea President Moon Jae-in.

The North and South today kicked off high-level talks to make preparations for that summit.

Officials planned to use the talks at the northern side of the Panmunjom border village to determine the date and agenda of the meeting between Kim and Moon. The results of the private talks weren't immediately clear.

Seoul's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who attended today's talks, said beforehand that setting up discussions between the leaders on ways to rid the North of its nuclear weapons would be critical. He said there could be several such preparatory meetings.

FOCUS ON THE OPTICS

Kim's trip to Beijing, analysts said, was staged to show that North Korea-China ties are back on track despite friction over the North's nuclear and missile tests. Photographs and other media from the visit document energetic handshakes and an account of a heartfelt toast from Kim.

"Beijing is reasserting itself and looking to shape the agenda for the upcoming summits," said Adam Mount, a senior fellow and director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

"Divisions between Beijing and Pyongyang were a major asset to Trump's pressure campaign," he said. Reinforcing their ties would weaken "Trump's hand in negotiations and diminish further the effectiveness of U.S. military threats," Mount added.

Ni Lexiong, a military expert at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said Kim was using conflict between China and the United States to "obtain benefits from both sides."

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The Xi-Kim meeting came as Trump is threatening China with a trade war.

Meanwhile, Trump's incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, has expressed little patience for extended negotiations. He has said North Korea should be asked to park its nuclear arsenal at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in Tennessee.

Some analysts in Washington saw Kim's visit to Beijing as a masterstroke that softened his international image as a rogue figure and made him look as if he genuinely wants a peaceful resolution to the conflict, potentially complicating Trump's task in their meeting.

"You're building this momentum, looking reasonable, looking willing to denuclearize," said Sue Mi Terry, a Korea scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the North Koreans. That image makes it harder for Trump to blame the North Koreans if talks do not yield a breakthrough.

"If we don't play ball, with this hawkish team in place with Bolton and so on, at least perception-wise we look like we're the problem," she said.

In international news coverage, Kim is often portrayed as an irrational madman, more of a punchline than a person, let alone a leader. Trump has referred to him as "little rocket man" in tweets. Kim's diplomatic debut will make it harder to dismiss him outright, experts said.

"We're seeing a carefully crafted North Korean strategy on diplomacy unfold on the world stage, starting with Beijing," Jean Lee, a North Korea expert and fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, said in an email.

Elsewhere Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he is worried that North Korean security threats to Japan, including short- and medium-range missiles, may not be discussed at the U.S.-North Korea summit.

Abe told parliament that he is worried Trump will focus on intercontinental ballistic missiles and forget shorter-range missiles that threaten Japan but not America.

"I'm worried that medium-range missiles and short-range missiles, the kind of missiles that are threats to Japan, may not be taken up during the talks, where the focus may be limited to ICBMs," Abe told the upper-house budget committee. "I'm also afraid that [Trump] may achieve a nuclear test ban, but end up accepting North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons."

He said international society must get North Korea to completely abandon its nuclear programs in a verifiable and irreversible way, and dismantle all types of missiles that can transport nuclear warheads.

Abe said he wants to remind Trump of his concerns during a trip to the U.S. next month. He also mentioned Japan's desire to settle North Korea's abduction of more than a dozen Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s.

NUCLEAR SITE ACTIVITY

With preparations underway for the summits, increased activity at a North Korean nuclear site has again caught the attention of analysts and renewed concerns about the complexities of denuclearization talks.

Satellite imagery taken last month suggests the North has begun preliminary testing of an experimental light water reactor and possibly has brought another reactor online at its Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center.

Both could be used to produce the fissile materials needed for nuclear bombs.

North Korea tested its biggest nuclear device to date in September. Pyongyang claims it was a hydrogen bomb.

While the North hasn't conducted any tests since, or test-launched any long-range missiles since Nov. 28, experts suggested that the heightened activity at the Yongbyon complex merit some concern.

According to an analysis in Jane's Intelligence Review published earlier this month, a testing program is underway at the experimental reactor, which means it could become operational with "little warning later in 2018 or in 2019." It said the preliminary testing follows increased activity throughout 2017.

In a separate report posted earlier this month on 38 North, a website that specializes in North Korea news and analysis, experts said they have detected activity at another reactor in the Yongbyon complex, which is located north of Pyongyang, that could be an even bigger concern.

Imagery of Yongbyon's 5-megawatt reactor suggests it was put into operation very recently. The website said that would mean "North Korea has resumed production of plutonium presumably for its nuclear weapons program."

Information for this article was contributed by Alan Fram, Matthew Pennington, Eric Talmadge, Mari Yamaguchi, Ken Moritsugu, Lee Jim-Man and Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press; by Emily Rauhala, Anna Fifield, Luna Lin, Amber Ziye Wang, Yang Liu, Min Joo Kim and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post; and by Jane Perlez of The New York Times.

A Section on 03/29/2018

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