BFF-82 Top North Korean general on way to US ahead of summit

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Top North Korean general on way to US ahead of summit

SEOUL, May 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday
that a senior North Korean official is headed to New York for talks as
preparations for his historic summit with Kim Jong Un gather pace.

“Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim
Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid
response to my letter, thank you!” Trump wrote in a tweet, hailing the
formation of a “great team” for the talks.

General Kim Yong Chol landed at Beijing airport on Tuesday and will
journey on to New York the following day after talks with Chinese officials,
according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

The trip is part of a flurry of diplomacy before the on-again, off-again
summit originally scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

Trump cancelled the talks last week, citing “open hostility” from the
North, but since then both sides have dialled down the rhetoric and the
process appears to be back on track.

US negotiators, headed by Washington’s current ambassador to the
Philippines Sung Kim, met North Korean counterparts in the truce village of
Panmunjom that divides the two Koreas on Sunday.

The State Department said a separate team of White House officials has
headed to Singapore to sort out logistics.

Chung Sung-yoon, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National
Unification, said Kim Yong Chol would be the most senior North Korean
official to step onto US soil since Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok met President
Bill Clinton in 2000.

The general has long been a right-hand man to North Korea’s leader,
playing a front-seat role during recent rounds of diplomacy aimed at ending
the nuclear stalemate on the Korean peninsula.

He sat next to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who is also a White House aide,
during February’s closing ceremony for the Winter Olympics in the South
Korean resort of Pyeongchang which was a turning point in the nuclear crisis.

He also accompanied Kim Jong Un on both of his recent trips to China to
meet President Xi Jinping, and held talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
when he travelled to Pyongyang.

“Kim’s official counterpart is Pompeo but he may also push for meetings
with (National Security Advisor John) Bolton and even Trump if possible,”
Chung told AFP.

– Controversial figure –

General Kim is a deeply controversial figure in South Korea, where he is
blamed for masterminding the 2010 sinking of the navy corvette the Cheonan,
which killed 46 sailors, an attack for which North Korea denies
responsibility.

From 2009 to 2016 he was also director of North Korea’s General
Reconnaissance Bureau, the unit tasked with cyber warfare and intelligence
gathering.

During that period North Korea ramped up its hacking programmes, including
a hugely costly penetration of Sony Pictures.

His journey to the US caps a frenetic few days of meetings between North
Korean and American officials.

Japanese broadcaster NHK showed footage of Kim Chang Son, Kim Jong Un’s de
facto chief of staff, arriving in Singapore on Monday, escorted by three
bodyguards.

An AFP photographer saw Kim returning to Singapore’s luxury Fullerton
hotel Tuesday and leaving some 30 minutes later in a three-vehicle convoy.

On Monday, a US government aircraft carrying a delegation including Joe
Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, departed from
Yokota air base in Japan en route for Singapore, NHK added.

The Washington Post reported that talks inside the Demilitarised Zone
would continue this week between US and North Korean officials.

South Korean media broadcast footage of US embassy vehicles, including one
carrying Sung Kim, leaving a Seoul hotel on Tuesday but there were no details
on whether the convoy was heading back to the DMZ.

If the original date stands, officials have only a fortnight to finalise
thorny protocol details such as where in Singapore the talks will take place
and how internationally sanctioned North Korean officials will travel there.

The key task is to settle the agenda. The main stumbling block is likely
to be the concept of “denuclearisation” — both sides say they want it, but
there is a yawning gap between their definitions.

Washington wants North Korea to quickly give up all its nuclear weapons in
a verifiable way in return for sanctions and economic relief.

But analysts believe North Korea will be unwilling to cede its nuclear
deterrent unless it is given security guarantees that the US will not try to
topple the regime.

BSS/AFP/RY/1915 hrs