FOREIGN POLICY/NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA/SPORTS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “South Korea’s leader urged the U.S. to ease preconditions for talks with North Korea, as the left-leaning administration in Seoul sought to extend an Olympics-driven rapprochement with Pyongyang and head off the possibility of a new flare-up.
President Moon Jae-in said in a meeting on Monday [2-26-18] with a special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping that ‘the U.S. needed to lower the threshold for dialogue’ and that Pyongyang should show a willingness to denuclearize, according to a spokesman for Seoul’s presidential Blue House.
The remarks, made in a meeting between Mr. Moon and Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong, also appeared aimed at bridging an impasse around U.S.-South Korea military exercises planned for the spring. Those exercises typically enrage North Korea.
The U.S. has long said that it is only willing to sit down for serious negotiations with North Korea if it is to discuss denuclearization. The North has said its nuclear arsenal isn’t up for discussion and that it is only willing to meet the U.S. to certify its nuclear status… At the Closing Ceremony on Sunday, Mr. Moon again shared a VIP box with visiting delegations that included U.S. presidential adviser Ivanka Trump and North Korean official Kim Yong Chol.
But on both occasions, the White House said that no words, nor handshakes, were exchanged between the sides… The White House said Sunday that it wasn’t convinced that Mr. Kim’s remarks expressing a willingness to talk to the U.S. would be followed up with action.”
-Jonathan Cheng, “South Korea’s President Wants U.S. to Ease the Way for Talks With North,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 26, 2018 07:24am