Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that he and his newly announced special representative to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, will be traveling to Pyongyang next week.
Pompeo announced the hiring of Biegun at the State Department on Thursday. He’s a former auto executive at Ford Motor Co. and a former senior staff member to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration who was rumored to be a possible candidate to replace former national security adviser H. R. McMaster.
Biegun assumes the role as special envoy to North Korea at a time when talks between the two countries appear to have stalled over the issue of denuclearization.
“The appointment of Stephen Biegun as North Korean special envoy comes at a critical time in US-North Korean relations. A full-time envoy is absolutely necessary to make progress, and given all the upcoming diplomatic activities September could be a make or break month for the Korean Peninsula,” according to David Maxwell, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Given the personal relationship between President Trump and Chairman Kim, my recommendation is that the President communicate that Mr. Biegun is his man for all North Korean negotiations, to empower him and establish his credibility with Kim,” Maxwell said.
Rejected proposals
Diplomatic sources said that the US has now presented North Korea with specific proposals for a path and timeline to denuclearization, all of which Kim has thus far rejected, believing the US’s stance to be “gangster-like.”
The latest assessment of North Korea’s nuclear program released by the International Atomic Energy Agency calls into question Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization amid ongoing activities at certain sites in the country and the inability for IAEA inspectors to access those sites.
