Foreign & Public Diplomacy

U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by the end of the year, but the rogue state has thrown cold water on his overtures so far.

Trump in mid-August abruptly ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea (and has since canceled another joint exercise), criticizing the drills as “hostile” toward Pyongyang while citing his “very good relationship” with Kim. Though North Korea has decried such drills as rehearsals for war, Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, effectively dismissed Trump’s conciliatory move as meaningless despite characterizing the relationship between her brother and Trump as “excellent.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by the end of the year, but the rogue state has thrown cold water on his overtures so far.

Trump in mid-August abruptly ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea (and has since canceled another joint exercise), criticizing the drills as “hostile” toward Pyongyang while citing his “very good relationship” with Kim. Though North Korea has decried such drills as rehearsals for war, Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, effectively dismissed Trump’s conciliatory move as meaningless despite characterizing the relationship between her brother and Trump as “excellent.”

“If the U.S. side attempts to promote the measures they have taken this time as some kind of ‘goodwill gesture,’ they will not get the answer they desire,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement.

Trump held historic summits with Kim Jong Un during his first term in an effort to convince North Korea to denuclearize. During those meetings—which took place in Singapore in June 2018; Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019; and the Korean demilitarized zone in June 2019—North Korea sought sanctions relief and security guarantees from the United States.

Ultimately, though, the talks broke down without a deal. No high-level talks between Washington and Pyongyang have happened since, with North Korea rebuffing all attempts by the Biden administration to reach out.

Trump’s more recent efforts to meet with Kim come as North Korea continues to conduct provocative missile tests and aid Russia in its war against Ukraine. Critics have accused Trump of reaching out to Pyongyang in desperation for a win on the global stage as he struggles to end the war with Iran on favorable terms for the United States. But whether or not Trump would have much to gain from meeting with Kim is another question.

For insights on what’s guiding Kim’s thinking at the moment—and his apparent lack of interest in another meeting with Trump—Foreign Policy spoke with Sydney Seiler, a former national intelligence officer for North Korea at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. Seiler, one of the top experts on North Korea in the United States, spent over 40 years focusing on the Korean Peninsula in various roles across the U.S. government.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign Policy: Why doesn’t North Korea seem particularly interested in meeting with Trump?

Sydney Seiler: A larger diplomatic goal was set [by Pyongyang] back at the end of 2019, implemented and publicized on Jan. 1, 2020, and overlaid with the [country’s] COVID-19 border shutdown. But basically, the objective was to walk away from diplomacy, to no longer pursue sanctions relief, aid, or assistance from the outside. Through self-reliance and austerity, and a commitment to the principle that the world will one day see things our way, [North Korea decided] to simply go down a path of refusing to talk to those countries who are insistent on talking about denuclearization, and staying within the boundaries defined by sanctions as far as acceptable exchange and cooperation. So, until countries are willing to walk away from the nuclear issue and walk away from sanctions, there’s simply no need to talk to them.

It looked like a mini-temper tantrum at the end of 2019 after the failure to achieve what Kim had been hoping for in Trump’s first term. In both Singapore........

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