U.S. Deputy Secretary of State visits Korea and North Korea reiterates no dialogue with the U.S.
On the day that the US Deputy Secretary of State and North Korea’s Special Representative for Policy, Stephen Biegan, scheduled to start a visit to South Korea, North Korea again emphasized its unintentional dialogue with the United States and criticized South Korea for acting as an “arbitrator” and demanded that the South Korean side stop intervening.
Quan Zhenggen, director of the US Bureau of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, spoke on the 7th through the North Korean Central News Agency. Regarding the holding of a new round of DPRK-US summit meeting, Quan Zhenggen said that the statement previously made by Choi Shan-ji, the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, has conveyed the DPRK’s position, and the DPRK side clearly reminded again that we have no intention of sitting with the Americans (dialogue) ".
Cui Shanji said on the 4th that the DPRK-US dialogue is only a tool for the US to deal with its political crisis, and North Korea does not need to sit down with the US for dialogue.
Quan Zhenggen said that although the DPRK has already stated its position, the South Korean side still says that it will continue its efforts to promote a new DPRK-US summit. He warned South Korea not to "intervene", otherwise it would only "cause the North-South relations to deteriorate."
South Korean President Wen Jae-in said during a video meeting with European Union leaders on June 30 that the South Korean side will go all out to strive for a face-to-face dialogue between the United States and the DPRK before the US presidential elections in November this year.
The US State Department issued a statement on the 6th, saying that Biegen is scheduled to visit South Korea and Japan from the 7th to the 10th to discuss the situation on the Korean Peninsula and "strengthen cooperation to achieve North Korea's ultimate, complete and verifiable nuclear abandonment."
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Biegen will visit South Korea from the 7th to the 9th, during which he will meet with South Korean officials such as Foreign Minister Kang Jinghe and Minister of Foreign Affairs Peace Negotiation with the Minister Li Duxun. After the meeting, the denuclearization talks on the Korean peninsula, which had stalled, sent a signal to the DPRK.
In a video forum hosted by the German think tank Marshall Foundation on June 29, Biegen said that considering the new crown epidemic, any leader’s face-to-face meeting would be difficult to hold, and it is unlikely that the heads of the US and North Korea will meet before the US presidential election, but the US side Will "continue to open the door to diplomacy".
North Korea’s top leader, Kim Jong Un, met with US President Donald Trump three times. The two met for the first time in June 2018 in Singapore, agreeing to establish a new DPRK-US relationship and a durable and stable peninsula peace mechanism, to achieve a denuclearization of the peninsula, etc. The meeting in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam last February, ended in vain, and the DPRK-US negotiations subsequently stalled; In June last year, I met at Panmunjom, a demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula, and agreed to restart intergovernmental consultations as soon as possible, but no progress has been made so far. (Gao Bingbing) (Special Feature for Xinhua News Agency)