First high-level encounters between the two governments could be significant, at a moment when the countries have been trading threats and readying military forces for a possible confrontation
Not long after US President Donald Trump declared last month that he would be “honoured” to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un amid mounting nuclear tensions, a secret encounter took place in Oslo between officials from the two countries. Joseph Yun, the US special representative to North Korea, had persuaded his boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to bless the rare, face-to-face dialogue with senior North Korean Foreign Ministry officials after assuring him that the agenda would focus on the status of four American citizens imprisoned by the Kim regime, according to people familiar with the process. Yun scored a breakthrough when the North Korean delegation agreed to allow Swedish diplomats in Pyongyang, who handle US affairs there, to visit the American prisoners, including 22-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier. Ultimately, North Korea allowed only one visit, with a different prisoner. As the administration continued to push, Pyongyang urgently requested to see Yun at the United Nations in New York. A June 6 meeting led a week later to Warmbier’s sudden release Tuesday after 17 months of captivity. He was medically evacuated in a coma; the other three Americans remain in captivity. The news surfaced after the flamboyant retired NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman – a former contestant on Trump’s reality show – flew to Pyongyang to resume his quixotic quest to broker detente between his US homeland and Kim’s authoritarian regime. But State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the visit “had nothing to do with the release”. Warmbier’s parents were told their son had contracted botulism and was given a sleeping pill soon after his trial in March last year and never woke. reported a senior US official as saying the authorities recently received intelligence indicating Warmbier was repeatedly beaten while in custody. Whether the back-channel diplomacy will lead to broader talks with North Korea may depend on Warmbier’s condition, and White House officials declined to comment on the geopolitical implications of his case.
