Gob Wire

Aside from a Trump-Kim phone call, the most direct route for negotiations over exactly where President Trump and Kim Jong-un will hold their historic meeting this spring looks to be between Mark Lambert, director for Korea policy at the State Department, and Pak Song Il, the ambassador for American affairs at North Korea’s delegation to the UN in New York.

Pak Song Il runs the North Korean side of what’s called the “New York channel,” which is a reference to the diplomatic hubs, country missions and cocktail hours in Manhattan that exist in and nearby UN headquarters where back channel direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea can and have occurred.

Pak and his aide Kwon Jong Gun are based about a block away from UN headquarters in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood in North Korea’s permanent mission to the UN. Both Pak and Kwon are tasked with handling relations with the U.S., according to Bloomberg’s Kambiz Foroohar.

Lambert now runs the New York channel for the U.S., according to the Washington Post’s Paul Sonne and John Hudson, although Lambert is based in Washington. (Warm up the shuttle from Dulles to JFK?)

A career diplomat, Lambert was involved in the six-party talks in Beijing aimed at peaceful resolution to the risks arisen after North Korea left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003. Since joining the Foreign Service in 1990, Lambert has become an expert on Asia overall, fulfilling assignments in Hanoi, China and Japan.

Lambert’s boss, Susan Thornton, who is the acting assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the State Department, is still awaiting confirmation by the Senate, but she will regardless help lead strategy on these matters.

As to where Trump and Kim will meet, experts mention the Panmunjom “joint security area” of the demilitarized zone located on the North and South Korean border.

Others suggest that a meeting somewhere near the German-speaking Liebefeld-Steinhölzli Swiss boarding school Kim attended as a boy in Koeniz near Bern could provide some comfort to both sides of the negotiations.

North Korea’s Pak has already engaged with U.S. media. He emailed a quote yesterday to The Washington Post reacting to the news of the Trump-Kim agreement to meet, writing:

“[From the] great courageous decision of our Supreme Leader, we can take the new aspect to secure the peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the East Asia region.”

Pak added that North Korea has resolved to work through issues via negotiation.

“The United States should know and understand our position and should further contribute to the peace and security-building in the Korean Peninsula with [a] sincere position and serious attitude,” Pak wrote.

Pak has handled grave international matters before. Last summer, he was tasked with relaying information from Pyongyang through the New York channel to Joseph Yun, then the State Department’s special representative to North Korea who retired last week, that Otto Warmbier, the American student from Cincinnati that North Korean officials had detained 17 months earlier, had fallen into a coma, allegedly shortly after being arrested.

Warmbier was detained Jan. 2, 2016 for purportedly trying to take as a memento a state propaganda sign from a staff-only area at a Pyongyang hotel. Following negotiations with Yun and others from Trump’s State Department, Warmbier was released June 12, 2017.; he died seven days later. 

The North Koreans put forth as a cause for Warmbier’s condition possible botulism and Warmbier’s alleged ingestion of a sleeping pill. However, Cincinnati doctors found no evidence of botulism or torture after examining Warmbier. Tests showed he had suffered an extensive loss of brain tissue, which the doctors attributed to an undetermined cardiopulmonary event that had deprived his brain of oxygen. 

Other medical experts said paralysis from botulism and ingestion of a sleeping pill could have caused Warmbier’s brain tissue loss and coma, and suggested that botulism might not show up after a long period if Warmbier had contracted it before his arrest or early in his detention. Doctors said other causes could have included a blood clot, kidney failure, pneumonia or sepsis. No autopsy was performed due to a request from Warmbier’s family.