Former North Korean diplomat Ri Il-kyu, whose defection to South Korea was made public last month, said on Thursday that the regime in Pyongyang will be interested in resuming nuclear talks if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
Ri said North Korea blew its opportunity to make progress with Trump during his meetings with dictator Kim Jong-un in 2019, a failure he blamed on the regime putting “inexperienced” and “clueless” military officers in charge of nuclear diplomacy. He said the North Korean foreign policy apparatus believes it could do a much better job of negotiating with Trump and wants a second chance at working out a deal that benefits Pyongyang.
“Kim Jong-un doesn’t know much about international relations and diplomacy, or how to make strategic judgment,” Ri said.
“This time, the foreign ministry would definitely gain power and take charge, and it won’t be so easy for Trump to tie North Korea’s hands and feet again for four years without giving anything,” he predicted.
Ri said North Korea has obtained assistance with its nuclear missile program, and some help with its faltering economy, by growing closer to Russia. Now that the regime has demonstrated it can endure the harshest Western sanctions with Russian help, it feels it could bargain with Trump from a stronger position.
“The Russians got their own hands dirty by engaging in illicit transactions and, thanks to that, North Korea no longer needs to rely on the U.S. to lift sanctions, which essentially means they stripped the U.S. of one key bargaining chip,” he said.
Ri added that North Korea also feels prepared to hold a summit with Japan and resolve the long-festering issue of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea. Japan insists that some of the abductees are still unaccounted for.
Kim Jong-un’s predecessor and father Kim Jong-Il declared the matter closed in 2002 after reversing himself on years of denials and admitting his regime kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens. Kim Jong-Il claimed most of those 13 were dead as of 2002, and would acknowledge no other victims.
North Korea has resisted further discussions on the abductees for over six years. In March 2024, Kim Jong-un’s influential sister Kim Yo-jong said Japan would have to “make a new start” and give up on “being obsessed by the past” if it wants to make progress on relations with North Korea. She described the abductees as an “unattainable issue which can never be settled.”
Ri said these harsh comments were just a tactic to “boost negotiating power” until the Japanese government offers further economic concessions.
Ri Il-kyu made his remarks on North Korean diplomacy in his first press conference since South Korean media revealed his November 2023 defection. Ri, a Cuba expert working for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, defected while stationed in Havana. He is the highest-ranking North Korean defector since 2016.
Two days before Ri’s interview, a grumpy op-ed at the Asia Times argued there was no reason to believe the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election would have any noticeable effect on North Korean diplomacy because the Kim regime is not really interested in denuclearization, no matter what it says to either hawkish or dovish administrations in Washington and Seoul.
Claiming that Trump’s ultimate results were little different than his predecessor Barack Obama’s, because both administrations “elicited the same response of Pyongyang engaging, probing possibilities for exacting concessions and then walking away when it was clear that nothing more was to be gained through the process,” the Asia Times advised whoever resides in the White House in 2025 to “expect the worst” from Pyongyang.
North Korea has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 2017, the year Trump came into office.
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