North Korea Agrees to High-Level Talks with South Korea

North and South Korea will hold high-level talks next week in the border village of Panmunjom to discuss both the upcoming Winter Olympics and how to “improve the two Koreas’ relations” more broadly, according to a statement from the South Korean Ministry of Unification on Friday.

“Seoul and Washington’s recent decision to delay joint military drills until after the games, confirmed by their presidents Thursday, appears to have prompted the North to accept the South’s dialogue offer,” reports South Korea’s Yonhap News.

The agreement to hold talks is seen as another positive step forward in a thawing of Korean relations that began with a surprisingly conciliatory New Year’s Day address from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, followed by North Korea reconnecting a cross-border telephone hotline they have not used in two years.

As Yonhap News points out, some observers see Pyongyang’s overtures as a hopeful sign the dictatorship is softening its position, or even buckling under the pressure of U.S.-led sanctions against its nuclear missile program, while others fear the diplomatic opening is an insidious tactic “aimed at weakening the united front in enforcing sanctions on Pyongyang and driving a wedge in the decades-long alliance between Seoul and Washington.”

A key point from the more skeptical perspective is that North Korea would technically be defying international sanctions by sending blacklisted officials to the Olympics as delegates, and South Korea would technically be helping them do it.

A prominent advocate for the more optimistic interpretation is Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), a former CIA officer. “The fact that the North Koreans are talking about joining the Olympics and participating in the Olympics is a big deal,” Hurd said on Thursday. “The fact that we have China working with us on sanctions against North Korea, a year ago nobody thought that was possible.”

President Donald Trump himself made that case on Thursday:

On the other hand, Adam Taylor at the Washington Post argues that Trump is “starting to look like a bystander in the situation on the Korean Peninsula” because a diplomatic opening has appeared despite, not because of, his tough stance and belligerent rhetoric.

“There is plenty of suspicion that North Korea’s willingness to talk is simply meant to drive the wedge even further between South Korea and the United States. But some experts do see hope,” Taylor concedes, citing both analysts who believe North Korea is very serious about improving relations, and those who caution North Korea extracted a huge concession from the U.S. and South Korea by securing the delay of military exercises during the Olympics, with nothing more than a vague offer to attend negotiations.

“When Seoul-Pyongyang talks go ahead next week, Trump will be in an unusual position—watching from afar, having capitulated on one key North Korean demand,” he writes. “The Trump administration had hoped to further isolate North Korea on the world stage. Thanks to Trump’s brash tactics, though, it may be the United States that ends up on the outside.”