Reuters has cited sources saying U.S. President-elect Donald Trump may seek to reopen talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after returning to office. The two men met three times during Trump's first term, the last time in 2019 when Trump visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone and briefly set foot in North Korea. But much has changed since then, Oxford University international relations lecturer Edward Howell tells TaiwanPlus.
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00:00Sources have told Reuters that President Trump, after inauguration, wants to hold direct talks
00:05with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
00:07What does Trump want to achieve?
00:09I think Trump is very keen to distinguish himself from previous administrations.
00:17And I also think that Trump will want to give the impression that he can successfully resolve
00:26the North Korea problem, much like his attitude towards Ukraine, for instance, particularly
00:32at a time when, for the last four years, relations between North Korea and the West really have
00:39plummeted to a low point.
00:43Kim Jong-un recently said that past talks with the US confirmed Washington's unchangeable
00:48hostility towards Pyongyang.
00:50Would Kim even agree to meet?
00:53Kim Jong-un will want to go into any form of meeting, not least with the United States,
00:59wanting something.
01:01We must remember that he has done all of this before.
01:05The first time around, in 2018, 2019, Kim Jong-un had not negotiated with Trump before.
01:11He's now had experience two and even three times of meeting with the US president and
01:19working out and analyzing Trump's negotiating style.
01:25But I also think that the situation with respect to the North Korea problem has also changed
01:31quite significantly from 2018.
01:35We now see North Korea not even pretending to want to negotiate with other countries,
01:41particularly with South Korea, particularly with the United States.
01:44We've also seen North Korea make clear that its relationship with the South has also fundamentally
01:51changed in the rejection of reunification as a policy goal.
01:58So it's not just the fact that both sides will want to show something of import from
02:05any meeting.
02:06Kim Jong-un will want something tangible.
02:08US and allies have confirmed that North Korean troops are deployed on the front line of the
02:14war with Ukraine.
02:16Can Donald Trump make an offer to Kim Jong-un that would convince him to curtail ties with
02:20Moscow?
02:21Even if the Ukraine war were to end, the North Korea-Russia relationship, this renewed partnership,
02:28is likely to endure in some form.
02:30It may not be as intense as it is now, but it's not going to drop completely, in my view.
02:39Even if Trump were to offer a scaling down or cancellation of military exercises, or
02:46if Trump were to ease some sanctions, North Korea would still not fundamentally abandon
02:55its ultimate goal, which is to be recognized as a de facto nuclear-armed state, and any
03:00negotiations in which the United States seeks to pursue CVID, the Complete Verifiable Irreversible
03:09Dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programs, we've seen this all before, North Korea will
03:14simply now not take part, in my view.
03:18Or, the alternative is that both leaders take part for a highly optical display of symmetry,
03:25much like we saw six years ago.