Offering a rare insider’s account of life in the world’s most isolated and repressive nation, a top North Korean diplomat turned defector told a Capitol Hill hearing that President Trump should consider the unthinkable — direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — as the best way to…
Offering a rare insider’s account of life in the world’s most isolated and repressive nation, a top North Korean diplomat turned defector told a Capitol Hill hearing that President Trump should consider the unthinkable — direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — as the best way to avoid all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.
Thae Yong-ho, Pyongyang’s No. 2 diplomat in Britain before defecting to the West last year, said Trump administration officials must hold direct talks with the North Korean leader to convince Mr. Kim personally that any military action against the U. S. and its allies would result in his country’s destruction.
“It is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all nonmilitary options before we decide that military action against North Korea is all that is left,” Mr. Thae told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Before any military action is taken, I think it is necessary to meet Kim Jong-un, at least once, to understand his thinking and try to convince him that he would be destroyed” if Pyongyang engages militarily with the U. S. or its allies in the region, he said.
Washington should also pair such talks with new rounds of economic and political sanctions “until the North Korean regime comes back to the dialogue table for denuclearization,” he said.
The onetime diplomat, the highest-ranking defector from the North in more than two decades, said the U. S. and its allies have yet to deploy all the “soft power” tools at their disposal, particularly at a time when the regime’s iron grip on the economy and the culture is showing signs of wear. State-sanctioned television programming, he said, is increasingly losing out to popular culture offerings from South Korean TV and Western movies and cartoons smuggled in on DVDs.
“Great and unexpected changes are taking place within North Korea,” Mr.
