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The Trump Administration Is Sending Mixed Messages to North Korea 

While President Trump angles for a meeting, the FBI and State Department signal business as usual.

In just under two weeks, the APEC summit will convene in Shenzhen, where U.S. President Donald Trump has floated the idea of meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. However, in the lead-up to the leaders’ meeting, the United States is sending Pyongyang two different messages

The first signal comes from Trump himself. In August he scaled back major military drills with South Korea at the last minute, stressing his “very good relationship” with Kim. He later said that Kim had answered his overtures. Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s sister, denied any communication between Trump and Kim Jong Un, but called the personal relationship “still excellent.” 

On October 31, Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated that Trump is “open” to a meeting with Kim, although “nothing has been scheduled.” He added that the president “doesn’t view meeting with someone as a concession.”

But the rest of the government seems to be working from a different playbook. Also on October 31, the FBI blamed North Korea for the $6.3 billion Binance theft, the largest crypto heist on record. And just two days before reiterating Trump’s interest in a summit with Kim, Rubio and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts reaffirmed their “resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization” of North Korea during a meeting on the sidelines of a G20 ministerial. Pyongyang has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is no longer up for negotiation. 

On November 4, Kim Yo Jong responded to these developments in a press statement, saying that “the continued hostile signal of the U.S. to our state compels the DPRK to reconsider the U.S. entity in various aspects.” (DPRK is an abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.) She specifically objected to the FBI accusation over the Binance hack, the trilateral demand for denuclearization, joint military drills, continued U.S. and multilateral sanctions, and the State Department “Trafficking in Persons Report,” which criticized North Korea. Kim cited these as evidence of “Washington’s invariable hostile policy toward the DPRK.”

A Korean analyst quoted by Reuters read the statement as a reminder that an end to Washington’s “hostile policy” is now a precondition for North Korea to engage in talks. Kim Yo Jong indeed rejected the idea of a meeting under these circumstances. “It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons who refuse to abandon their policy of confrontation while talking about dialogue,” she said in the statement. “…To the hostile signals that the United States continuously sends, we do not know how to respond otherwise.”

Hours later the South Korean military reported another missile launch by Pyongyang, the fourth in a month.

It’s important to note that, of the things Kim directly complained about, only one has seen the U.S. president’s direct involvement – the joint military drills, which Trump dramatically scaled back. The others – the FBI statement on Binance, the State Department report, and allied coordination – reflect the routine operation of U.S. government agencies. In North Korea’s view, this confirms the existence of the U.S. government’s “hostile” policy toward North Korea, regardless of what Trump himself might say. 

That is exactly the lesson Kim Jong Un took from the failed Hanoi summit with Trump. As a recent........

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