North Korea's Kim opens door for dialogue with Biden

[JOHANNESBURG] North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he's ready for "both dialogue and confrontation," offering an opening for talks as US President Joe Biden's new nuclear envoy heads to the region to build support for a strategy toward Pyongyang.

The comments, made in a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of his ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Thursday, are the first high-level suggestion of talks since Mr Biden replaced Donald Trump, who met Mr Kim three times.

Pyongyang has so far rebuffed Biden's requests for dialogue and lambasted the US president's comments that were critical of North Korea's arms buildup.

Mr Kim also tempered the remarks with a call for the country to "get fully prepared for confrontation in order to protect the dignity of our state and its interests," according to a Friday report from the state's official Korean Central News Agency. The message follows a pledge from Mr Kim made at the start of the year to develop more advanced nuclear technology.

Mr Biden's special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, is due to hold talks with his counterparts from Seoul and Tokyo on Monday during his visit.

Mr Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House in April and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in May, the first foreign leaders to be invited to his official residence.

The visits signaled the importance he places on his country's relationship with the two allies, which together host the bulk of US troops in Asia.

Mr Moon has been pressing the US to resume stalled nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang.

"Kim's courteous reminder will probably be received differently in Washington and Seoul," said Soo Kim, a Rand Corp policy analyst who previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency.

She said the message from the North Korean leader won't do much to change Biden's approach but it could offer encouragement to the Moon administration, which has been "dangling carrots before Kim to entice the North Koreans to return to the dialogue table."

"Kim will only grant dialogue to the US and South Korea when his conditions are met," Ms Soo Kim said.

The North Korean leader has shown no interest in resuming nuclear talks that could offer relief from sanctions choking his state's economy. North Korea has been finding ways to dodge sanctions through cybercrimes and illegal trade from ship-to-ship transfers on the high seas, according to reports made to the United Nations Security Council.

Still, his country is feeling the pinch. North Korea's economy will barely grow in 2021 after its worst contraction in decades as it continues to struggle with the pandemic, international sanctions to punish it for its nuclear and missile testing, and a lack of trade with its main benefactor, China, Fitch Solutions said in April.

Earlier in the week at the same meeting, Kim Jong Un made a rare admission the food situation was "growing tense," due to typhoons last year that wiped out crops. The comments underscored farm-sector shortfalls made worse by his decision to close borders to prevent Covid.

While Mr Kim was talking with Mr Trump, he was busy adding to his stockpile of fissile material and missiles that can deliver warheads to the US and its allies, increasing his leverage for when disarmament talks resume. Despite economic hardships, Mr Kim has pressed ahead with a nuclear arsenal that North Korea has long said prevents a US invasion.

Mr Trump's former envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said in an interview this month with the Arms Control Association that he believes a negotiated settlement with Pyongyang is possible.

Mr Biegun sees the Biden policy as a continuation of what his team was looking for, which is "an agreement on a path toward denuclearisation with a certain endpoint that is complete denuclearisation but that we can structure along the way with some flexibility."

Shares of companies expected to benefit from better ties between North Korea and South Korea rallied Friday morning in Seoul on the news.

BLOOMBERG