(Bloomberg) -- North Korea is willing to give up its nuclear weapons if the safety of Kim Jong Un’s regime is guaranteed, South Korea said, boosting pressure on the U.S. to agree to peace talks.
Kim will meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a summit along their shared border at the end of April, the statement said, adding that North Korea was ready to suspend weapons tests and hold candid talks with the U.S. to normalize relations. The announcement came after South Korean envoys returned to Seoul after meeting Kim in Pyongyang. They are expected to visit the U.S. soon.
“North Korea has clearly expressed its intention for denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, and if there is no military threat, and North Korea’s regime security is promised, they have clarified that there is no reason to hold nuclear weapons,” Moon’s office said.
“We will see what happens,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet Tuesday that linked to an earlier North Korea story. The White House, National Security Council and State Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The Japanese yen weakened against the dollar after the announcement.
Trump’s administration has said that North Korea must be willing to denuclearize before talks can begin, even as tensions on the Korean Peninsula have eased recently as both countries participated in the Winter Olympics. Trump has threatened military action to stop Kim from acquiring the capability to strike the U.S. homeland with a nuclear weapon.
‘Still Rhetorical’
Analysts cautioned that North Korea has a history of using negotiations to buy time for its weapons program. The Kim dynasty has over the years raised the prospect of abandoning its nuclear-weapons program if the U.S. gave up its hostile policies, though serious negotiations haven’t taken place since six-party talks also including China, Japan and Russia broke down in 2009.
“It’s progress -- certainly more than most would have expected -- but it’s still rhetorical,” said Robert Kelly, a political science associate professor at South Korea’s Pusan National University. While it’s unclear if Trump will agree to return to negotiations, he said, “the pressure will be on to talk.”
The U.S. and North Korea have been at loggerheads since the Korean War ended without a peace treaty almost 65 years ago, and Kim’s government has repeatedly said nuclear weapons are necessary to deter any U.S.-led military action.
As recently as Saturday, North Korea said the country wouldn’t accept U.S. preconditions.
“It insists that it will have dialogue only for making the DPRK abandon nuclear weapons and persist in ‘maximum pressure’ until complete denuclearization is realized,” a North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson told the official Korean Central News Agency. “This is really more than ridiculous.”
(Updates with Trump’s tweet in third graf.)