Chosun Ilbo is now reporting the meeting will in be Pyongyang on Wednesday. Four days are scheduled. Kim Hyok Chol, is the former DPRK ambassador to Spain. Said to be meticulous, and dedicated, a veteran diplomat. Asahi Shimbun reported he has experience for this role from the six party talks. He is in effect standing in for North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui at the working level. Choe met earlier with Biegun in Sweden to set up these working talks in Korea in preparation for the second summit expected at the end of February. Kim Hyok Chol was in the DPRK delegation with Kim Yong Chol in DC, received at the White House by Trump January 18. Later Ambassador Kim was pictured in conference in Pyongyang with the same group reporting back to Kim Jong Un. All were seated on the leather sofas (imported from Italy?) in the same study where Kim Jong Un gave his 2019 News Year's Address.
Channel A Top Ten analysts speculated that Kim Hyok Chol was appointed to this important working group role as envoy to deal with Stephen Biegun as a measure to deepen the field of foreign ministry talent, and to put forward someone from the foreign policy elite from the younger generation who has Kim's confidence. In an earlier program on this same topic, the appointment of Kim Hyeok Chol to be the working group negotiator for North Korea, it was said that Choi was too senior in the DPRK foreign ministry to carry out working level negotiations. The US has had a lot of experience with her in prior negotiations. According to Korea Joongang Daily, Ambassador Kim was appointed because he sits on the powerful State Affairs Commission. Like Choe, he speaks English fluently. One Channel A analyst's reasoning suggested a sexist attitude toward women negotiators may have played a role.
The Channel A Top Ten presentation alerted its audience to the presentation at Stanford by Biegun on US North Korean relations on January 31. One of the moderators was Robert Carlin who is a contributing writer on 38North.org. It was revealed that Robert Carlin has been advising Biegun for months. This is remarkable really. Carlin is one of the best experts the US has on negotiations with North Korea. Andrew Kim and Siegfried Hecker were also present. Biegun said a lot of things that undercut the impression he has made in the press earlier, because as a negotiator, he has been somewhat guarded in his public remarks until now. He gave a very informative presentation that displays his skills as a negotiator, at least before a more familiar audience. VOA Korea typically edits Envoy Biegun's statements to make him appear to be a hard liner (kang kyong pa). He does appear to adamantly insist on economic sanctions to the bitter end.
In fact, there was much daylight in his presentation, in the context of the medieval environment inside the beltway and in the media. Following US and South Korean media closely on these negotiations I thought I was imagining this, that an apparently competent person is negotiating for the US. Is this really possible or is this a show before "plan B?"
https://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2019/01/288702.htm
Plan B as it is referred to by Channel A News, and others in South Korea, were the alternative "contingencies" to be taken up by the United States if North Korea is not forthcoming during these negotiations. Among those are resumption of large scale military exercises in Korea, stepping up the economic sanctions, including more rigorous secondary sanctions against violators, and perhaps military options.
Stephen Biegun said this at Stanford during the question period after his presentation concerning the pot shots taken by the intelligence community at the administration's efforts:
"Therefore, ‘what’ is the question, and what President Trump has done is directed the Secretary of State to engage diplomatically through a combination of pressure and incentives to see if we can invite North Korea to make a different set of choices. That’s the complete picture. It’s not that we’re deceived, it’s not that we don’t know what’s going on, it’s not that we don’t take the threat with the gravity that it requires. And by the way, we have enormous capacities to deter that threat as well. So if I were presenting this same information, I would say that we have the potential here for a grave threat to the United States of America, and therefore it is all the more urgent that we engage diplomatically with North Korea to see if we can change the trajectory of their policies by changing the trajectory of our own. And that’s what we’re trying to do.
So my frustration isn’t with the accuracy of the information. It’s how it’s presented and how it’s interpreted. You cannot divorce the intelligence information from policy. The intelligence information is critical as an underpinning for the policy, but the policy is to address the threat and that’s what my frustration was last week."
Biegun also revealed,"Less noticed but nonetheless very important, I also had the opportunity during that (DC) visit to hold a first extended working-level discussion with my newly appointed North Korean counterpart, Ambassador Kim Hyok Chol."
So this will be their second meeting.
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