Pence raises prospect of talks with North Korea while applying 'maximum pressure'

Comments by Vice President Mike Pence suggest the Trump administration may be looking more favourably at direct US diplomatic engagement with North Korea as South Korea considers a rare summit with its neighbour and long-time foe. Pence said in a newspaper interview the United States and South Korea had agreed, in discussions on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, on terms for further diplomatic engagement with North Korea, first with Seoul and then possibly direct talks with Washington.
The prospect of negotiations comes after months of tension between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, with US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trading insults and threats of destruction amid tightening sanctions from the United Nations. Speaking to the Washington Post on his way home from the Games, Pence said Washington would keep up its "maximum pressure campaign" against Pyongyang but at the same time would be open to talks without pre-conditions.
"The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization," Pence was quoted on Sunday as saying. "So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we'll talk."
Pence's overture also appeared aimed at regaining the initiative for the Trump administration after the vice president was widely seen as having been outmaneuvered in an Olympics public relations battle with Kim's sister, who charmed her South Korean hosts despite skepticism about the North Korean leader's sincerity.
Washington was caught off guard by the effectiveness of the North Korean propaganda campaign, US officials said. "Kim ran an end run on us, and he had some success, at least in the opinion section," one senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But given conflicting signals in the past from Trump and his senior aides over the potential for diplomatic engagement with North Korea, it remained to be seen whether Pence's remarks would constitute a genuine shift in US strategy. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday it was too early to judge whether the latest developments represented the start of a diplomatic process.
In December, Tillerson offered to start talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, but the State Department later said there would first have to be a "period of calm" in which Pyongyang suspends testing. "We've said for some time it's really up to the North Koreans to decide when they're ready to engage with us in a sincere way, a meaningful way," Tillerson told reporters in Egypt. "They know what has to be on the table for conversations."
Trump, in office since January 2017, has at times questioned the purpose of further talks with the North after years of negotiations by previous US administrations failed to halt the North's weapons programs. Last year, North Korea conducted dozens of missile launches and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions as it pursues its goal of developing a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the United States.
Relations between the two Koreas have improved in recent weeks, with Pyongyang sending its highest-ranking delegation ever to attend the Winter Olympic Games, including Kim Jong Un's younger sister, Kim Yo Jong. The visit included an invitation for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean standoff, to travel to Pyongyang for talks.
Such a meeting, if it came about, would mark the first inter-Korea summit since 2007. A South Korean government official said Seoul's stance was that separate talks with North Korea by South Korea and the United States should both lead to the denuclearization of the North while sanctions and pressure continue to be applied.
North Korea, which has not recently expressed any interest in talks with the United States, defends its weapons programs as essential to counter US aggression, saying regular war drills between the United States and the South are preparations for invasion. The South hosts 28,500 US troops, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war. During Pence's visit, Moon assured the vice president he would tell the North Koreans clearly that they would not get economic or diplomatic concessions for just talking, only for taking concrete steps toward denuclearization, the Washington Post reported.
Moon also told Pence in private that harsh rhetoric from Washington, including threats of military action, was not helpful to South Korean efforts to engage with North Korea, the senior administration official told Reuters. South Korea said it would seek ways to continue engaging North Korea, including trying to arrange more reunions for families divided by the war and lowering military tensions.