North Korea’s former top nuclear envoy seen with Kim Jong Un
North Korea’s former top nuclear envoy, Kim Yong Chol, accompanied leader Kim Jong Un to an art performance, state news agency KCNA said on Monday, signalling that the former spymaster is alive and remains a force in the power structure.
Sunday’s appearance followed conflicting reports of shake-ups in the team that led engagement with the United States last year, only for nuclear talks to collapse after Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump failed to strike a pact at a February summit.
KCNA named Kim Yong Chol as the 10th person among a group of 12 “leading officials” who accompanied Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, to an amateur art performance by wives of officers in the North Korean Army on Sunday.
That move may have cleared the way for long-time diplomats sidelined during last year’s process to take centre stage if talks with the United States resumed, analysts said.
Asked on Sunday about the last US contact with Kim Yong Chol and North Korea in general, Pompeo declined to answer, saying, “We conduct our negotiations in private.” Asked about reports of a “shakeup” of Kim’s negotiating team in a May 5 interview with ABC News, Pompeo said it did appear that his future counterpart would be somebody else, adding “But we don’t know that for sure.”
On Friday, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo had said Kim Yong Chol, the leader’s righthand man and a counterpart of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before the failed summit, had been sent to a labour and re-education camp, citing an unidentified North Korean source.
He said, “Just as President Trump gets to decide who his negotiators will be, Chairman Kim will get to make his own decisions who he asks to have these discussions.” As Kim Jong Un’s point man for the nuclear talks, Kim Yong Chol was stripped of a key party post in apparent censure for the summit’s collapse, a South Korean lawmaker said in April.
“Kim Yong Chol appears to have been pushed back from power since the Hanoi summit,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.
