WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un may be unprecedented, but during a quarter-century of on-off nuclear talks…
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un may be unprecedented, but during a quarter-century of on-off nuclear talks with North Korea, U. S. officials have learned a thing or two about dealing with an inscrutable adversary and have tried many tactics to get their way: quiet persuasion, black humor and even walking out of the room.
Across the table, they’ve faced dogged North Korea negotiators who launch into anti-American tirades, reflecting a doctrinaire mindset and the vast ideological gulf between two nations still technically at war. But they’ve also encountered officials who are polite, know their brief inside-out, and occasionally flash wit.
As Trump prepares to meet with Kim on Tuesday, there’s uncertainty about how the two headstrong leaders will get along and whether the former real estate mogul can extract nuclear concessions from the young North Korean autocrat. Four former U. S. officials reflect here on their own, often-difficult experience of negotiating with North Korea.
GONE WITH THE WIND
Starting in mid-1993, Robert Gallucci led the U. S. in direct talks with North Korea, seeking to rein in its then-nascent nuclear program. The first meeting took place in New York, on the top floor of the U. S. Mission to the United Nations.
Gallucci, then an assistant secretary of state, recalled that the Americans were taken aback by the sight of a dozen or so North Korean diplomats, each one with a lapel pin with a picture of their supreme leader.
“You can imagine us going into a meeting with lapel pins with Bill Clinton’s picture? It’s just implausible. But that actually goes to something that’s quite important for people to understand,” said Gallucci, describing North Korea as a cult of leadership as much as it is an authoritarian government. “And one forgets that at one’s peril. I think you can lose a lot of ground in discussion if you don’t understand how sensitive they are about their leadership.”
To the Americans’ surprise, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, Kang Sok Ju, during the talks quoted from the epic American civil war novel, “Gone with the Wind.” It wasn’t the line immortalized by Clark Gable in the Hollywood movie — “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Gallucci said, but rather “something to do with wagons rolling and dogs barking.” After the meeting, he gave Kang a copy of the book as a gift. Gallucci got a box of Korean ginseng tea in return.
Gallucci said the North Korean would use extreme and insulting language about the United States, and he’d push back, but ultimately he wasn’t interested in polemics. “It’s natural that you have this hostility. Having said that, you still want to build what rapport you can in the discussion so that you can reach your objectives.
