South urges CVID as North raises price for disarmament

South Korea's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday urged the North to carry out complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) in response to Pyongyang’s latest statement suggesting its price for disarmament is rising.

North Korea's underground nuclear test site at Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province, undergoes demolition in May 2018. Satellite photography shows that the tunnels leading into the test site have since been restored. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

South Korea's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday urged the North to abide by its “legal obligation” to carry out complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID).

Seoul was responding to Pyongyang’s latest statement suggesting its price for nuclear disarmament is rising.

“[CVID] is an international legal obligation imposed on North Korea by eleven unanimous resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, leaving no room for choice,” the Foreign Ministry said in its statement.

The ministry pointed to the North’s “deceptive behavior” of agreeing to scrap its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs multiple times in return for multiple economic and energy guarantees yet continuing to carry out nuclear weapons and missile tests over the past three decades.

The ministry’s statement came a day after Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, staked out a hardline position against “irreversible disarmament,” or even talks with the United States regarding the North’s nuclear and missile arsenal.

According to the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim said the United States “is being delusional if it believes that it could halt our advancement and further achieve irreversible disarmament by temporarily halting joint military drills, suspending the deployment of strategic assets or reversibly easing sanctions.”

Kim also dismissed U.S. calls for unconditional talks, dismissing them as a tactic designed to hinder advances in North Korea’s weapons programs.

“We stand ready to firmly respond to any actions that could infringe upon our sovereignty and harm the stability of our people,” Kim said, threatening that Pyongyang would not stop with its recent launch of a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Kim’s statement underlines the ever-rising cost of negotiating with the North over its WMD programs.

The North previously referred to international sanctions and joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises as proof of Washington’s “hostile” intent toward Pyongyang and demanded they be scrapped before talks could even resume.

Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a September 2021 speech that the United States “should take the first step” by “permanently stopping joint military exercises and deployment of all kinds of strategic weapons” if it is “truly desirous of peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.”

But with her most recent comments, Kim Yo-jong appeared to argue the United States could walk back on those changes, implying such concessions would not be enough to get the North to suspend weapons tests or return to the negotiating table, let alone abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

Seoul and Washington, who have framed their joint exercises as defensive in nature, have repeatedly ruled out the North’s earlier preconditions for talks as non-starters, arguing that sanctions can only be lifted, and economic aid offered, if the North first carries out CVID.

Kim’s statement suggests the gap is further widening between Washington and Pyongyang’s stances on the scope of the North’s denuclearization and when sanctions should be lifted.

At the 2019 U.S.-North Korea summit with then-U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Kim Jong-un offered to dismantle Pyongyang’s enrichment facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex and cease all nuclear weapons and missile tests if Washington would agree to lift sanctions.

But Trump refused, saying Kim’s offer failed to cover other aspects of the North’s nuclear weapons program, including a suspected second enrichment plant.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]