Shane KiteThe former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens is expected to meet in Finland April 19 with DPRK officials including Choi Kang Il, the vice chairman of North Korea-U.S. relations, as well as a contingent from South Korea to discuss terms for North Korean denuclearization, according to South Korean TV Chosun and NK News.
The talks would be the first public face-to-face meeting between Americans and North Koreans ahead of an expected summit between President Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump said on March 8 he would meet with Kim Jong-un after South Korean officials visiting the White House said Kim was willing to denuclearize if North Korea’s security could be guaranteed.
North Korea’s Choi Kang Il had just finished meeting this week with South Korean counterparts in Stockholm.
Described by NK News as “track 1.5 meetings,” the talks in Finland will include, according to TV Chosun: Korean government officials and several academics including Stephens, who has been a fellow at Stanford since leaving the foreign service in 2013. She left the university briefly in 2014 to lead the U.S. mission in India as charge d’affaires during the first seven months of Narendra Modi’s administration. Since returning she has been the William J. Perry Fellow in Stanford’s Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).
Stephens was acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in 2012 after serving as ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011. Her 35-year career as diplomat and foreign service officer spans service in Asia, Europe and Washington D.C.
An email sent to Stephens to confirm her reported travel to Finland went unanswered by press time.
Preliminary Talks
Unofficial talks often occur before official international discussions, particularly when diplomatic goals involve hypersensitive issues like nuclear weapons. Groundwork can be laid, initial contacts made and each side can get a sense of the other, whether the talks are over real issues or simply hammering out logistics of future meetings. Such preliminary discussions are particularly important when the nations involved have had such scant direct contact like the U.S. and North Korea.
Back channel communications over logistics of an upcoming Trump-Kim summit were expected to be handled by the U.S. and North Korea via existing networks, including 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 direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea have occurred.
Mark Lambert, director for Korea policy at the State Department, runs the New York channel for the U.S., while Pak Song Il, the ambassador for American affairs at North Korea’s delegation to the UN in New York, runs the North Korean side.
While the Times reported today that the CIA had taken a lead role in planning Trump’s meeting with Kim, the report may be an effort by the executive branch to stage-manage the narrative as turnover in the State Department and elsewhere in the administration has made it appear there may be a lack of U.S. officials in place to handle the details of such an unprecedented summit.
The article, which contends the CIA instead of the State Department is leading coordination of the summit with intelligence counterparts in North Korea, seems to suffer from a lack of context due to the article’s reliance on “several officials” as sources.
First: A summit as historic and important as Trump-Kim will involve “a whole of government approach” including experts in Asia and North Korea specifically as well as denuclearization specialists. This context along with the fact that there are so few channels of direct communication between the U.S. and North Korea (the administration has copped to just two: the New York channel and now the CIA’s), and the fact our own intelligence heads admit they have very few insights into (read: “sources” or contacts among) North Korean leadership, makes the notion that ‘The CIA’s got this’ to seem a bit wobbly, if not completely untrue.
Second: CIA Director Mike Pompeo is taking over as Secretary of State upon confirmation in April after Trump fired Rex Tillerson Tuesday from that position. While discussions for a potential summit have been taking place since Trump announced it, Pompeo will be taking any control over summit prep he’s alleged to have at Langley over to Foggy Bottom as soon as he’s confirmed.
And while it’s true the CIA often plays a lead role among intelligence agencies on helping set strategy and in advising the President on major international engagements, it’s rarely been the case that the CIA completely replaces the State Department on logistics, strategy and other matters.
The news in particular that Stephens, a go-to former diplomat, is headed to Helsinki to establish contact with the North Koreans makes the claim that Langley has overtaken Foggy Bottom in planning even less credible. While Stephens would be acting in a civilian capacity, and ambassadors are known for working with overseas CIA personnel, her status as a State Department alum means she would be coordinating with any of her network who remain at Foggy Bottom, as well as elsewhere, to optimize her meeting with the North Koreans.
We suggest then viewing today’s Times piece as a message from the executive branch (or maybe Pompeo himself or Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly) contending that despite the fact that the top foreign affairs position in the U.S. is in a transitional state, continuity is being maintained and talks continue apace about a Trump-Kim meet-up.
