(Bloomberg) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will have a long train ride home through China to think about what went wrong in his second summit with Donald Trump and how to keep it from reversing his gains of the past year.
The U.S. president’s shock decision to walk away from nuclear talks Thursday after hours of meetings in Vietnam raised new questions about Kim’s strategy for relieving the international sanctions squeezing his economy. The move potentially increases internal pressure on the 35-year-old leader to demonstrate he didn’t make a mistake by sitting down with the enemy.
“Kim also invested a lot in the summit,” said Shin Beomchul, director at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies’ Center for Security and Unification. “Kim’s domestic political risk is also high.”
The summit’s collapse reinforced the fundamental choice facing North Korea: Negotiate with the U.S. or force another nuclear crisis to improve its bargaining position. While it’s hard to know which path Kim will choose, a hard-line approach risks plunging him back into the diplomatic isolation he experienced before an unprecedented year of summits and red-carpet receptions.
Kim’s effort at damage control was apparent in a state-media summary early Friday that mentioned none of the acrimony and committed him to another meeting with Trump. The Korean Central News Agency report reaffirmed the leaders’ “common understanding” to maintain efforts to “defuse tensions and preserve peace,” supporting Trump’s claim that Kim pledged not to resume weapons tests.
Hours earlier, however, top North Korean diplomats painted a bleaker picture for a foreign audience in a rare late-night news conference in Hanoi. Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told reporters the U.S. was “missing an opportunity that comes once in a thousand years” and warned that Kim may have “lost the will” to negotiate.
A Friend in Xi
Kim was scheduled to meet Vietnamese officials Friday before leaving Saturday to retrace his train route home via China. That would present an opportunity to confer face-to-face in Beijing with his most important benefactor: Chinese President Xi Jinping.
China renewed a call for the United Nations to relax some sanctions on North Korea, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang telling a news briefing in Beijing it may help persuade Pyongyang to denuclearize. Lu had no comment on whether Kim would visit Beijing on his way home.
Trump himself held out the prospect for another summit, but cautioned that “it may not be for a long time.” For the U.S., a delay risks giving Kim more space to develop his weapons program and solidify his status as a nuclear power.
Still, Kim faces his own time pressure to escape a U.S.-led campaign that helped push his already impoverished country into its deepest recession in two decades, according to the South Korean central bank. North Korean diplomats said talks broke down after the U.S. refused to support lifting sanctions imposed since 2016 in exchange for dismantling its aging Yongbyon nuclear complex.
That demand appears to cover five rounds of United Nations Security Council measures approved since North Korea’s fifth nuclear bomb test in September 2016. Those penalties, which would require U.S. support to undo, include everything from restrictions on North Korea’s oil imports to a ban on its export of iron and coal.
But the summits have played well at home for Kim, with his state media trumpeting him as being on equal footing with the leader of the world’s richest country.
Although the inner workings of North Korean politics are shrouded in secrecy, continued hardship could bolster those who favor a more confrontational approach toward the U.S. Kim exiled, imprisoned or executed 50 to 70 members of the country’s political elite last year, including opponents of engagement with the U.S., according to a report published last week by the North Korea Strategy Center, a Seoul-based research institution founded by a former defector.
“One option could be for Kim is to shift responsibility onto Trump or United States imperialists,” said Soo Kim a former Korea analyst who specialized in North Korean state media at the Central Intelligence Agency. “The North Koreans are also great at the blame game.”
’Eyes Wide Open’
North Korean statements Friday stopped short of criticizing Trump, suggesting that Kim wanted to preserve at least for now the personal rapport both leaders have credited with underpinning talks. The push-back could still focus on other senior U.S. officials at the negotiating table, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, who have previously been the targets of North Korean criticism.
Another option for Kim is to appeal to his relationships with China and South Korea, which have improved greatly since Trump agreed to meet with Kim and end his diplomatic isolation. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has staked much of his administration on improving ties between the arch-rivals, and needs U.S.-North Korean talks to work out so he can host Kim on an unprecedented visit to Seoul.
Similarly, Xi -- then in the midst of an escalating trade war with Trump -- told Kim last year that China had made a “strategic choice” to mend ties with North Korea. Senior North Korean diplomats went to Beijing for talks in a trip that coincided with the summit in Hanoi.
“Kim will have to recalibrate his negotiating tactics because this administration is going in with eyes wide open,” said David Kim, a former State Department official who’s now a research analyst at the Stimson Center. “Kim may now try to visit Xi again to signal that he has more options, but he’s met his match in Trump, I’d say.”
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