During the election campaign, Joe Biden said he would not meet Kim Jong Un without preconditions.
Seoul:
Headline-grabbing summits between the leaders of North Korea and the United States will no longer be on the agenda, analysts say, after US President-elect Joe Biden called Kim Jong Un ” thug “, contrary to Donald Trump’s declarations of love.
Trump’s bizarre diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang has grown from mutual insults and threats of war to “love letters” and the very first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.
The two mercurial men met twice more after their historic summit in Singapore in 2018, but without concrete progress in denuclearization efforts.
Now, Biden’s victory heralds a return to more standard diplomatic standards, analysts say, with his administration keen to see tangible steps towards denuclearization and progress in a series of labor negotiations ahead of any summit designed for television.
During the election campaign, Biden said he would not meet Kim without preconditions and accused Trump of “emboldening” the North Korean leader.
During the last presidential debate last month, the Democrat denounced Trump for befriending Kim, comparing the North Korean leader to Adolf Hitler.
“He talked about his good buddy, who is a thug,” Biden said of Kim. “It’s like saying we had a good relationship with Hitler before he invited Europe.”
For its part, while state media in Pyongyang have yet to discuss the election or the result, they have previously excoriated Biden, the official Korean central news agency calling him a “mad dog” who must be “beaten to death”.
‘Slightly pissed off’
Analysts say North Korea saw Trump’s unorthodox approach as its best chance of securing a deal that would allow it to retain at least some of its nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), both banned under UN Security Council resolutions.
Pyongyang will be “slightly irritated by the change in leadership,” former CIA analyst Soo Kim said.
“The regime is aware that the prospects for a high-level meeting with an American leader are going to be slim now,” she added.
“We expect a more systematic and principled approach from Pyongyang. It probably means less ad hoc interactions and a method of dealing with Kim.”
Throughout the process with Trump, Pyongyang has continued to develop and advance its arsenal, displaying a range of new weapons – including a huge new ICBM – in a military parade last month marking its party’s 75th anniversary. in power.
It has carried out dozens of missile launches since the collapse of the second Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi in February 2019, but the North has made sure not to cross the US president’s red lines of an ICBM or a nuclear test.
Pyongyang has likely delayed strategic weapons testing this year “out of consideration for Trump,” said Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Korea National Strategy Research Institute.
“North Korea was hoping for Trump’s re-election,” he told AFP.
But Pyongyang is growing frustrated that the much-vaunted personal relationship between Kim and Trump has not led to a relaxation of sanctions or other substantial concessions from Washington.
In July, Kim’s powerful younger sister said the United States appeared “hostile” to the North “no matter how good the relationship between the top leaders.”
“Adverse reaction”
Biden’s victory will have “greatly complicated Pyongyang’s calculations,” said Park Won-gon, professor of international relations at Handong Global University.
North Korea despises Biden for his role in the Obama administration, which has adopted a policy of “strategic patience,” refusing to engage with Pyongyang unless it offers concessions first, or until that the regime collapsed from within.
The North carried out a nuclear test four months after the start of Obama’s first term, but will likely wait to assess the Biden administration’s approach before launching major provocations in an attempt to gain “the upper hand,” said former CIA analyst Kim.
“Kim Jong Un can understand that a poorly timed launch can cause an unwanted reaction from the United States and its partners,” she said.
Instead, Park suggested, Pyongyang could resort to lower-level actions to try to get the attention of the new US president.
“There is a great possibility that Pyongyang is targeting South Korea,” he said. “He might find it safer to create tension on the Korean Peninsula.”
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
