Stephen Biegun has the temerity to say, that he cannot trust Kim Hyuk Chol, who refused to respond to demands that North Korea give up all of it's nuclear weapons, resources and facilities, as if this was something that was in the cards or on the agenda for the Hanoi summit. To get Kim to the summit Biegun implied there was wiggle room or flexibility in the US approach to negotiations and that not everything need be achieved at once. Yet once at the summit, US demands included everything, in an all or nothing approach, that exceeded the parameters of the Singapore summit, with no offers of any sanctions relief of any kind for interim measures. For example, the US demanded that all weapons of mass destruction, (a pet phrase of the neo-con proponents of interminable middle east wars) including chemical and biological weapons, as part of the US demands that would require fulfillment in addition to the so called hek list or inventory of all nuclear weapons, enrichment facilities, missile sites, production facilities and so on. It was this all or nothing approach that previously caused the talks to falter last summer after the Singapore summit, when Pompeo made similar demands in Pyongyang and Kim Jong Un refused to meet with him or other US representatives for months.
Moon Chung In, the unofficial advisor and spokesperson for the Moon administration has to maintain an optimistic attitude as does the National Security Advisor, because the Moon Jae In administration in South Korea committed itself to this course politically, regardless of how incompetent or offensive US policy is toward North Korea.
While the Blue House is not taking Choi's statements as an accurate indicator of no possibility of further negotiations, that possibility hangs by unlikely threads. The first according to Moon Chung In is that the US needs to demonstrate flexibility toward North Korea and toward South Korean economic overtures such as Kumgansang and Kaseong. Otherwise South Korea has no leverage. The US has stated repeatedly that isn't going to happen. In fact sanctions are closing on North Korea, and foreign revenues are drying up and food is in scarce supply. Humanitarian efforts such as the public health anti TB efforts in North Korea are even being shut down. Discussion of more sanctions is counterproductive according to Moon, but everyday, we hear Bolton and a coterie of demagogues in the Congress either initiating or threatening more sanctions on a daily basis. This is little more than a regime change policy.
Secondly, Moon says the smallest disputes now can result in disaster. Yet the largest dispute has already happened and shows no prospect of compromise possible on the US side.
This fundamental difference which is well understood by long term observers of the negotiations between the US "one bundle" or Libyan approach, and a simultaneously reciprocal step by step, phased trust building approach, favored by North Korea, has been the obstacle to negotiations all along. A retreat was required from the US all or nothing approach after Singapore which Stephen Biegun played out in working level talks, as evidenced by his presentation at Stanford before the Hanoi summit could even occur. Once, the North Koreans committed to meet at Hanoi, the US went back to the old playbook of all or nothing, give up everything in return for vague promises of future benefits and no sanctions relief of any kind in the interim. No one who knows anything about North Korea could have seriously thought this would work.
It was a duplicitous approach for a US administration which cannot stand up to domestic criticism of its North Korean initiatives by the intelligence establishment, the neo-cons, the press, the opposition, and the military industrial complex of think tanks, and Congressional defense industry flunkies. One can be assured of one thing in US East Asian policy in a conflict situation- when there is a bipartisan consensus in the US on what US policy should be, it is invariably based upon grandiose illusions. Such policies typically have the disastrous consequences we know so well- the so called loss of China, the "loss" of the first Korean conflict which resulted in war with China and an armistice rather than the expected military victory, the disaster in Vietnam, and finally this, the development of North Korea as a nuclear power.
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