Despite the looming presidential election in the United States, North Korea remains steadfast in its refusal to resume dialogue with Washington. Analysts point to Pyongyang’s deep-seated wariness of the perceived “hostile” American policy as the primary obstacle.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may be open to reviving his rapport with Donald Trump, should the former president return to the White House. However, Pyongyang has reportedly learned from the failed 2019 summit in Hanoi that a top-down approach cannot easily overcome the entrenched bureaucratic machinery in Washington.
Conversely, if US Vice-President Kamala Harris succeeds Joe Biden as US president, she is expected to adopt a tougher stance on North Korea, potentially forgoing the diplomatic overtures that have characterised the current administration’s policy. Harris’ past rhetoric and background in law enforcement suggest she is likely to eschew such efforts in favour of a more hardline approach.
In a swift response to Trump’s boasts about his rapport with Kim, North Korean state media made it clear that Pyongyang’s position remains unchanged, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.
“We do not care”, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) declared on Wednesday, arguing that the “confused” partisan infighting and shifting political dynamics ensures that US policy towards Pyongyang will not change.
Trump said during his recent acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for the presidential election that he “got along very well with [Kim]”, signalling his apparent desire to re-engage with the North Korean leader.
“It’s nice to get along with somebody that has a lot of nuclear weapons or otherwise,” Trump said. “When we get back, I get along with him. He’d like to see me back too. I think he misses me.”
KCNA said in a commentary that Trump had a “lingering desire” for better North Korea-US relations.
“Even if any administration takes office in the US, the political climate, which is confused by the infighting of the two parties, does not change and, accordingly, we do not care about this,” it said.
While Trump spoke about his ties with Kim, he failed to improve bilateral relations when he was in office, KCNA said.
Trump met Kim three times in the space of a year with denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula listed as one of the key goals on the agenda. In addition to the 2019 Hanoi summit, the two leaders met later in the same year at the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas and in the 2018 Singapore summit.
A failure to reach a bilateral agreement after their meeting in Hanoi has been cited by analysts as a key reason for North Korea stepping up its nuclear and missile programmes in recent years.
KCNA has appeared to signal North Korea was open to dialogue with the US given that it urged Washington to stop threatening Pyongyang by ceasing its joint military drills with the South, analysts say.
“North Korea won’t return to dialogue unless Washington departs from its hostile policy. This is a firm stance that won’t change, no matter who becomes the next US president”, Lim Eul-chul, a senior researcher at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told This Week in Asia.
The annual US-South Korea military exercises were seen by North Korea as proof of Washington’s hostile policy and their cessation was non-negotiable for Pyongyang, Lim said.
If Trump were to become president again, North Korea could consider an opportunity to “test the waters”, Lim said.
“Even then, Kim would proceed with extreme caution. It would be disastrous for him to fail and lose face again,” he added.
Evans Revere, a senior fellow at Brookings, said while there was much anxiety about the US presidential race in many European and Asian capitals, Washington’s positions on its allies would remain unchanged regardless of the election outcome.
“Donald Trump’s views on alliances, on partnering with like-minded democracies, and on the United States’ long-standing commitments to its alliance partners are well known,” said Revere, who was a former US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
“There is no reason to believe that those views will change if he becomes president.”
Moon Seong-mook, a senior researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, said a Harris presidency would further reduce the chances of a diplomatic breakthrough given the US vice-president’s past remarks against North Korea.
When Harris visited the Panmunjom joint security area in the demilitarised zone in 2022, she denounced the North’s “brutal dictatorship, rampant human rights violations, and an unlawful weapons programme that threatens peace and stability”.
Harris, who announced her candidacy for the 2020 US presidential election and later withdrew from the race, wrote on her Twitter (X) page in 2019: “I can tell you this. As president, I won’t be exchanging love letters with Kim Jong-un”, in a jab at Trump swooning over letters he received from Kim while in office.
