It’s one of the four points listed in the joint statement US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un signed on June 12, the day of their historic meeting in Singapore. “The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate
The gesture has nothing to do with demands North Korea denuclearize, yet Pyongyang will consider its completion part of the deal that now puts the onus on Trump to begin alleviating some of North Korea’s economic and diplomatic pain.
“We are right where North Korea wants us to be,” said Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
“My concern is that once the remains are returned, which they should be, that the North’s demands will just increase because they could claim that they’ve finished half of the Singapore bargain,” she said.
The other requirement of North Korea, according to the document, is to work to denuclearize and the administration has repeatedly stated that Pyongyang must complete that process before sanctions are lifted, a point Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reinforced at the United Nations last week. With the recent dismantling of test sites, Pyongyang could argue it on its way to doing just that.
The other half of the bargain relates to normalizing relations between the two nations and a peace treaty. North Korea could essentially argue that before it can denuclearize it will need security guarantees, which the US committed to in the document. That could take the form of an actual peace treaty, which in turn could impact the presence of nearly 30,000 US troops in South Korea who are there as part of the UN command force maintaining the peace.
“Now it’s America’s turn to make a move. It could complicate negotiations because North Korea’s demands could increase exponentially,” Duyeon Kim told CNN.
North Korea’s possible power play could compel the White House to make good on some of its commitments, emboldening an already confident leader to push for greater concessions. Kim Jong Un’s leverage, with his nuclear arsenal, and allies like Russia and China loosening their own sanctions, may put the US in the uncomfortable position of having to acquiesce to Kim’s demands before any verifiable denuclearization takes place.
“What makes it more challenging this time around compared to other years is that North Korea is playing hardball to flip the order in which negotiations proceed,” Duyeon Kim said. “In the past it was: denuclearize first, and then you get the big stuff. Now, the North is trying to flip it by saying, give us normalization of relations, a peace treaty first, and then we’ll consider negotiating.”
This is one of the complications that arises when a non-nuclear demand is part of negotiations with North Korea, a regime long used to finding ways to subvert treaties and prolong moves to verify its promises.
Trump and his administration, said Duyeon Kim, will have to create new avenues of negotiation so the nuclear talks do not fall hostage to everything else that has become part of the conversation.
