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White House National Security Advisor John Bolton

US State Department Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun’s public endorsement of an all-or-nothing approach to North Korea on Mar. 11 shows that the US administration has aligned itself around a hardline stance. The shift to a tougher position became clear after the breakdown of negotiations in the second North Korea-US summit, but in retrospect, trouble could be seen to be brewing as early as a week before the Hanoi summit.

The primary cause for optimistic projections about the summit was a speech that Biegun delivered at Stanford on Jan. 31. In attendance were experts such as nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker and Robert Carlin, visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, who advocate realistic solutions. During this speech, Biegun said that the US was prepared for simultaneous and parallel implementation of an agreement with North Korea. These comments were interpreted as meaning that the US had abandoned its long-standing insistence that North Korea must denuclearize completely before sanctions relief is provided.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said in an interview with the press on Feb. 14 that “It’s our full intention of getting a good outcome in exchange for relieving those sanctions [against North Korea],” which led some analysts to believe that the US was planning to provide partial sanctions relief.

It came to the public’s attention that the US had raised the bar on Feb. 21, five days before the summit, with a press briefing by a high-ranking official in the US government. This official observed that Biegun hadn’t said anything about “step-by-step” measures. The US needs movements that are “very fast” and “very big,” the official explained, and doesn’t regard gradual measures as the key driver of this process.

The same official also mentioned that a freeze of all of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missile programs was a prerequisite for negotiations with the North, which greatly widened the scope of what the US wanted from the North beyond the closure of the Yongbyon complex, which had been in the spotlight until that time.

Even earlier, on Feb. 19-20, Trump said that denuclearization was the ultimate goal but that the US wasn’t in a hurry to get there and that he didn’t think the Hanoi summit would be his last meeting with Kim. In retrospect, these remarks suggest that Trump was contemplating the possibility of walking away from the summit without a deal.

One of the main factors that appear to have been behind the change of mood between the end of January and the end of February is Biegun’s visit to Pyongyang. During a visit to Pyongyang on Feb. 6-8, after his Stanford speech, Biegun had working-level talks with North Korea State Affairs Commission Special Representative for US Affairs Kim Hyok-chol, during which the two agreed to meet once more in Hanoi, shortly before the summit. While Biegun said at the time that North Korea had been proactive in the working-level talks, he may actually have concluded that there had been inadequate progress and taken a more aggressive stance during the working-level talks in Hanoi.

The biggest factor, however, is likely to have been Trump’s concern about the political backlash he might suffer if North Korea’s only concession were the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. During the press conference held shortly after the Hanoi summit concluded abruptly without an agreement, Trump said, “I could’ve signed an agreement today, and then you people would’ve said, ‘Oh, what a terrible deal.’ [. . .] I’d much rather do it right than do it fast.”

Another possibility is that Pompeo, who is regarded as a likely candidate in the 2024 presidential election, settled on a hardline stance in consideration of the mainstream position in the Republican Party and attacks from Congress. This appears to have been an alignment that made it easier for White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, an ultra-hardliner, to gain the upper hand. In short, the trio of Trump, Pompeo and Bolton also appear to have had a hand in the US’ reversion to an all-or-nothing approach.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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