TEHRAN, Apr 24 -North Korea has replaced Kim Jong Un’s right-hand man who steered nuclear talks with the United States, apparently blaming him for a failed summit between the two countries, a South Korean lawmaker said on Wednesday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -im Yong Chol was removed as head of the United Front Department, the North Korean Workers’ Party apparatus that traditionally oversees ties with South Korea and increasingly with the United States, Yonhap news agency reported.
He appears to have been “censured” after the second Trump-Kim summit in February failed to reach a deal on the sanctions relief Pyongyang would get in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program, Lee Hye-hoon, head of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told Reuters.
The National Intelligence Service and Unification Ministry, in charge of affairs with the North, declined to comment.
Kim Yong Chol, a hardline military commander who also holds the title of vice chairman of the ruling party’s Central Committee, has been Kim Jong Un’s top nuclear envoy and counterpart to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The North’s foreign ministry demanded last week that Pompeo be replaced in talks by someone more mature.
Kim Yong Chol did not accompany Kim Jong Un to Russia this week for talks with President Vladimir Putin, unlike the North Korean leader’s four trips to China and two summits with Trump which the envoy attended as a top aide.
This month, Kim Yong Chol was named a member of the State Affairs Commission, a supreme governing body chaired by the young leader.
Kim Yong Chol’s removal from the United Front Department, if true, would be a positive sign for future nuclear talks, said Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior fellow at South Korea’s Sejong Institute.
Hawks like Kim Yong Chol have sought to retain the status of nuclear weapons state by offering partial denuclearisation in exchange for the lifting of key sanctions, he said.
“The unrealistic negotiating strategy that Kim Jong Un presented in Hanoi showed that he failed to reach a rational judgment because his eyes and ears were covered by those hawks,” Cheong said.
A South Korean official told Reuters it was too early to draw any conclusion about Kim Yong Chol’s political fate or its impact on nuclear negotiations.
Source:Reuters
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