Tadao Yanase last month flatly denied a report by the Asahi Shimbun daily that he had met officials from the city of Imabari and Ehime Prefecture in April 2015, “as far as my memory goes.”

 

Making his first Diet appearance since the report came out, however, Yanase downgraded his categorical denial Thursday, saying he may have met them after all.

He also acknowledged he spoke with Kake Gakuen officials at the April 2015 meeting and on other occasions, but he denied the Asahi’s report that he told them that the operator’s bid to open a new veterinary department was the “prime minister’s matter.”

Yanase’s alleged use of such a phrase, documented by a memo of the meeting that the Asahi said was drafted by Ehime officials, reinforced suspicions that Abe may have exerted his influence to help his longtime friend Kotaro Kake, who runs the school, win government approval to establish a new veterinary department.

“I met officials from the Kake Gakuen side around April” in 2015, Yanase told the Lower House of the Diet, admitting that he met them on two other occasions inside the Prime Minister’s Office, before and after the April meeting.

But Yanase, currently a senior official at the industry ministry, emphasized that his contact with Kake Gakuen officials was never initiated at Abe’s urging. He also said that although he was aware of Abe’s longtime friendship with Kake, he never gave them any “special treatment” in agreeing to see them.

Opposition lawmakers were particularly unconvinced of Yanase’s claim that he met officials from the Kake Gakuen side without Abe’s knowledge, and that he never kept Abe abreast of what took place in those meetings.

“The prime minister and his executive assistants are practically inseparable. The assistants update the prime minister on the tiniest matter. It’s hard to imagine that you go about meeting somebody from the outside of your own volition,” said Akira Nagatsuma of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.

Should Yanase — who said he learned of Kake Gakuen’s willingness to open a new veterinary department when he met its officials in February or March in 2015 — admit he had kept Abe posted on details of his conversation with them, it would deal a blow to Abe, who repeatedly insisted in past Diet sessions that he didn’t know of the operator’s intention to apply for the deregulation project until January last year.

 

On the April 2015 contact, Yanase identified one of the officials aligned to Kake Gakuen as Yasuhiro Yoshikawa, who now serves as chief of its veterinary department in Imabari. “They came to see me as a group of about 10 people in total. … I still don’t remember if there was anyone from Imabari (municipal office) and Ehime (Prefectural Government) accompanying” Yoshikawa. “But it’s possible there may have been someone from Imabari and Ehime in the 10-person crowd,” Yanase said.

Yanase said Yoshikawa did most of the talking by “passionately” explaining to him how outdated Japan’s veterinary education remains.

Lawmakers from both Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and opposition parties repeatedly quizzed Yanase over whether he used the phrase — “prime minister’s matter” — to describe Kake Gakuen’s project in the April 2015 meeting.

Yanase denied this, saying he only conveyed to those in attendance Abe’s general commitment to open a new veterinary department under his deregulation drive.

“I only mentioned that the prime minister is of the opinion that the government will consider lifting a ban on the opening of a new veterinary department as soon as possible, but I don’t believe I singled out a project by Imabari as a prime minister’s matter,” he said.

“I don’t think the memo by Ehime Prefecture accurately captured what I intended to say.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Yanase’s latest admission that he met Kake Gakuen officials does not change the government’s stance so far that the official process to approve the school’s project was never rigged in its favor.

 

The ministry will acknowledge that Sagawa, then director-general of the Financial Bureau, and other state officials were involved in the manipulation and consider taking disciplinary actions that may include pay cuts, the sources said.

 

It is also expected to question the responsibility of Budget Bureau Director-General Shigeaki Okamoto, who as deputy vice minister was in charge of managing official documents at the ministry.

Finance Minister Taro Aso has said he intends to punish any officials found involved in the scandal after the results of an investigation by the Osaka District Public Prosecutor’s Office are released.

On Friday, Aso told a news conference that he wants to appoint successors for Sagawa and former Vice Minister of Finance Junichi Fukuda, who resigned last month over sex harassment allegations, “by the end of the ongoing session” of the Diet on June 20 if the results of the probe are available.

In February 2017, it was learned that the Finance Ministry’s Kinki Local Finance Bureau had sold a plot of state land at a huge discount to ultranationalist school operator Moritomo Gakuen. Abe’s wife, Akie, had been appointed honorary principal of an elementary school Moritomo planned to build on the land.

Between the February revelation and April the same year, Akie’s name and other descriptions in documents related to the shady land sale were deleted or manipulated in the detailed records of the sale negotiations.

At the request of opposition parties, the ministry is scheduled to submit the original, unaltered documents to the Diet on Wednesday.

On March 9, Sagawa resigned as head of the tax agency, mainly for disrupting Diet deliberations with his testimony on the document-tampering. He also took a 20 percent pay cut for three months for undermining trust in state property administration.

Aso has signaled the ministry could impose a stricter punishment on Sagawa, depending on the results of the investigation.

 

The leaders, who met for the first time in more than two years as part of a trilateral summit in Tokyo, also advocated the promotion of free trade and globalization in what appeared to be a not-so-veiled dig at U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” protectionist agenda.

 

The Japan-China-South Korea summit coincides with a significant thaw in inter-Korean relations following last month’s historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In a joint appearance with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Moon, Abe said it’s a shared position of the trio that “U.N. resolutions against North Korea must be fully implemented” to realize the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the regime’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Citing Kim’s surprise visit earlier this week to the Chinese city of Dalian for a meeting with President Xi Jinping, Abe said the trio “needs to cooperate with the global community so that emerging momentum for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia can lead to concrete actions on North Korea’s part.”

None of the three leaders went beyond their basic pledge of denuclearization, although Li congratulated Moon on his recent breakthrough talks with Kim and celebrated what he called “signs of a positive change” exemplified by the recent steps toward reconciliation between the two Koreas. Li also said he is “hopeful that Japan and North Korea will hold dialogue.”

The three-way talks precede Kim’s landmark summit with Trump, which is expected to take place in the coming weeks and would see Trump become the first sitting U.S. president ever to hold face-to-face dialogue with the leader of North Korea.

While Japan and South Korea uphold the position that maximum pressure must be maintained until Pyongyang fully denuclearizes, China is said to be more tolerant of an incremental lifting of sanctions against the regime.

After the summit meeting, a high-ranking Japanese official insisted the trio remains “in sync” over the denuclearization of North Korea, but didn’t offer a clear-cut assurance that Japan was able to bridge the gap with China regarding where they stand on the maximum pressure tactics.

“While China continues to sanction Pyongyang and press for denuclearization, it also is working to secure its own security interests on the peninsula through a degraded U.S. military presence,” said J. Berkshire Miller, a senior visiting fellow with the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo.

Of the three summit participants, China’s Li was most strident in his condemnation of the protectionism trend spearheaded by Trump, calling for the acceleration of debate over a Japan-China-South Korea free trade agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Li also emphasized the need for stronger economic ties between the three countries throughout his speech, saying “(we) have far more mutual benefits than differences” to overcome and “We three are beneficiaries of free trade.”

“We will make continued efforts to promote economic globalization, solve our problems in a reasonable manner and espouse free trade,” he said. “Let’s fight protectionism.”

Li’s proclamation of a desire for closer ties with Japan and South Korea dovetails with Xi’s new foreign policy, summed up in the slogan “community of common destiny,” under which China has placed a growing emphasis on pursuing an improved, “win-win” relationship with its Asian neighbors.

Moon also seemed to back this view, going so far as to express his belief the three nations, bound by the important role they play in steering economic growth and ensuring peace in the region, will become “partners that can bring about a tectonic shift in world history.”

This year’s summit came at a time when Abe’s administration has been grappling with a spate of scandals that are chipping away at his popularity. These include allegations of cronyism and the mishandling of documents within multiple ministries.

“A constructive trilateral summit with some kind of tangible diplomatic outcome will be useful for Abe as well, given his tenuous position domestically and the perception that Abe’s Trump diplomacy is no longer bearing as much fruit,” said Corey Wallace, a Japan expert and security policy analyst at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at Freie Universitat, Berlin.

In the news conference, Abe also said he was able to win “understanding and support” from both leaders on the “swift resolution” of the long-standing issue of Japanese abductees kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 80s. Their repatriation has been one of Abe’s top policy priorities since his return to power in 2012.

The three Asian powers have taken turns hosting the trilateral summit since 2008.

Staff writer Jesse Johnson contributed to this report.

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Gist of trilateral summit discussion

 

Japan, China and South Korea will:

Cooperate toward the denuclearization of North Korea.

Fully enforce United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

Cooperate on the economic front, including through infrastructure development in Southeast Asia.

Step up negotiations on a trilateral free trade agreement and the wider Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Li and Moon:

Expressed understanding over Abe’s request for cooperation in resolving the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea decades ago.

 

“I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong Un. Date & Place set.”

 

Pompeo and his “guests” would land at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland at 2 a.m., Trump wrote, adding that he would be there to greet them.

Media reports said U.S. nationals Kim Hak-song, Kim Dong-chul and Tony Kim, who is also known as Kim Sang-duk, had been moved from a labor camp to a hotel on the outskirts of Pyongyang early last month.

“We would like to express our deep appreciation to the United States government, President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and the people of the United States for bringing us home,” the three said in a statement released by the State Department as their plane stopped over in Alaska.

“We thank God, and all our families and friends who prayed for us and for our return. God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world.”

The prisoners’ release removed a key obstacle to Trump’s planned talks with Kim and gave the president a win that he can call a show of goodwill ahead of the meeting.

“President Trump appreciates leader Kim Jong Un’s action to release these American citizens, and views this as a positive gesture of goodwill,” the White House said in a statement. “The three Americans appear to be in good condition and were all able to walk on the plane without assistance. All Americans look forward to welcoming them home and to seeing them reunited with their loved ones.”

A report Thursday by North Korean state-run media said that Kim Jong Un had granted the three men an “amnesty” after accepting an “official suggestion” from the U.S. president conveyed to him by Pompeo that they be released.

A statement from the family of Tony Kim lauded Trump for his role, thanking him for “engaging directly with North Korea.”

Kim Dong-chul was arrested on suspicion of espionage in 2015, while Kim Hak-song and Tony Kim, who had worked at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, were detained last year.

In April 2016, the North sentenced Kim Dong-chul to 10 years of hard labor for carrying out what it described as spy activities. Kim Hak-song was held over “anti-state activities” and Tony Kim was accused of committing unspecified criminal acts intended to overthrow the government.

The trio’s release comes after U.S. national Otto Warmbier was freed while in a coma last June. Warmbier, a University of Virginia student when he was arrested, died soon after returning to the United States following more than 17 months in prison.

At least four South Koreans are still held by the North, while the issue of abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and ’80s remains a sore point for Japan.

“The return of Americans imprisoned by North Korea is a hopeful and positive step, a step that should be followed by the return of the Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea,” the Japanese Embassy in Washington said in a tweet Wednesday.

Pompeo, the top U.S. diplomat, had traveled to Pyongyang for meetings with senior North Korean officials Wednesday, and speculation had grown that he would be returning with the three detainees. He had been dispatched by Trump to finalize preparations for the landmark U.S.-North Korea summit focusing on riding the North of its nuclear weapons. Media reports have said the meeting could happen in mid-June, likely in Singapore. Pompeo’s visit was his second trip to the North Korean capital in weeks, but first as secretary of state.

Asked if a failure to release the detainees would have diminished the chances of a Kim-Trump summit, Pompeo said, “It would have been more difficult. … I’m glad that we don’t have to confront that.”

On Thursday, North Korea made its official mention of the planned summit, with Kim calling it a “historic” opportunity, state media reported.

Kim, who has conducted a flurry of diplomatic moves in recent weeks, told Pompeo that a summit with Trump “would be a historic meeting” and an “excellent first step” toward the “building of a good future” on the Korean Peninsula, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Over the last two months, the North Korean leader has met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping twice as well as with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a rare inter-Korean summit.

During their meeting, Pompeo also delivered a verbal message from Trump to Kim, for which the North Korean leader “expressed thanks, highly appreciating that the U.S. president has shown deep interest in settling the issue through dialogue.”

The language was a marked shift from just eight months ago, when the leaders of the two countries traded a series of pointed threats and insults. Pictures released by KCNA showed Kim and Pompeo laughing together while walking and grinning broadly for a posed photograph.

A plane carrying the three former detainees, Kim Hak-song, Kim Dong-chul and Tony Kim, who is also known as Kim Sang-duk, arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland in the early morning hours Thursday. Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, greeted them on the plane.

Exiting the plane, which was situated beneath a giant American flag, the three beaming men shook hands with Trump, before raising their arms in triumph and making peace signs above their heads.

“It’s like a dream. We’re very, very happy,” they said through an interpreter on the tarmac.

Trump made a point of publicly thanking Kim Jong Un for the release, saying the U.S. was “starting off on a new footing,” but noting that the larger goal of ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons remained his focus.

“I’m very honored to have helped these three folks,” Trump said. “They’ve been through a lot. The true honor is going to be if we have a victory in getting rid of nuclear weapons.”

In thanking Kim Jong Un for releasing the three, Trump said he believes the young North Korean leader wants to reach an agreement on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. “I really think he wants to do something and bring that country into the real world. I really believe that,” the president said.

After brief comments on the tarmac, the three detainees were then transported to nearby Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for further evaluation and medical treatment.

The prisoners’ release removed a key obstacle to Trump’s planned talks with Kim and gave the president a win that he can call a show of goodwill ahead of the meeting.

The White House said in a statement earlier that Trump “appreciates” Kim’s move and saw it as a “positive gesture of goodwill.”

Ahead of their return to the U.S., it said the three appeared to be in good condition, with all able to board the plane in Pyongyang without assistance. They later transferred to a separate aircraft with more extensive medical facilities at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo.

A report Thursday by North Korean state media said that Kim had granted the three men an “amnesty” after accepting an “official suggestion” from the U.S. president, conveyed to him by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that they be released.

They were the latest in a series of Americans who have been detained by the North in recent years for seemingly minor offenses and typically freed when top U.S. officials or statesmen personally visited to bail them out.

While no family members were present to greet the detainees, a statement from the family of Tony Kim lauded Trump for his role, thanking him for “engaging directly with North Korea.”

Of the three, Kim Dong-chul, who was arrested on suspicion of espionage in 2015, was held the longest, while Kim Hak-song and Tony Kim, who had worked at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, were detained last year.

In April 2016, the North sentenced Kim Dong-chul to 10 years of hard labor for carrying out what it described as spy activities. Kim Hak-song was held over “anti-state activities” and Tony Kim was accused of committing unspecified criminal acts intended to overthrow the government.

The trio’s release comes after U.S. national Otto Warmbier was freed while in a coma last June. Warmbier, a University of Virginia student when he was arrested, died soon after returning to the United States following more than 17 months in prison.

Speaking to reporters with the detainees, Trump paid his respects to the parents of Warmbier, calling them “spectacular people.” Fred and Cindy Warmbier have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, accusing the North Korean government of torturing and killing their son.

“We are happy for the hostages and their families,” they said in a statement Wednesday. “We miss Otto.”

At least four South Koreans are still held by the North, while the issue of abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and ’80s remains a sore point for Japan.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday hailed the Americans’ release, calling the North’s move a “positive” step. Speaking with Trump over the phone, Abe was quoted as saying that he had congratulated the U.S. leader on the “big achievement.”

Abe, who was briefed by Trump about Pompeo’s Wednesday visit to Pyongyang, also confirmed with Trump their common goal of North Korea’s “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” according to Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura.

During the 20-minute phone call, Trump underscored Japan’s key role in North Korean issues, calling it a “big player,” Nishimura said.

Noting the Japanese abductees, Abe pledged to “make utmost efforts to resolve the issue” in cooperation with the United States, South Korea and China.

Abe has long called resolving the abduction issue a top priority of his government.

Tokyo officially lists 17 citizens as abduction victims. While five of them were repatriated in 2002, North Korea maintains that eight have died and the other four never entered the country.

Experts said it was unlikely that the move to release the U.S. detainees would translate into any immediate movement on the Japanese abductee issue.

“I don’t think this step says anything specific about hope for the Japanese abductees, unfortunately,” said James Schoff, an East Asia expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “The abductee issue is something that can only be addressed bilaterally between Kim and Abe, in the context of a broader effort at ‘settling their unfortunate past’ and working toward normalization.”

Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until the end of World War II in 1945, and while it established diplomatic ties with South Korea in 1965, it has yet to do so with the North.

Schoff said that if denuclearization and Korean peace talks move forward, something he called “a big ‘if,’ ” then this would open the door to an Abe-Kim summit.

Kim told South Korean President Moon Jae-in during last month’s inter-Korean summit that he is ready to hold talks with Japan at “any time,” comments that were relayed to Abe in a telephone call shortly after.

Schoff, however, said that the prospects of such a summit would not become clear until after the Kim-Trump meeting.

Pompeo was dispatched by Trump on Wednesday to finalize preparations for the landmark U.S.-North Korea summit, which is focused on ridding the North of its nuclear weapons.

Japanese media reports said Thursday that the U.S. is calling for the North to dispose of all data gleaned from the site of its six nuclear tests, as well as its Nyongbyon nuclear facility. The reports said Washington is also asking that thousands of engineers involved in the country’s nuclear program be moved abroad.

Kim has already said he will shutter the Punggye-ri nuclear site this month and invite foreign experts and journalists to witness the closure.

As for the summit venue, Trump said Thursday that it will take place in Singapore on June 12. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” Trump said in a tweeted announcement.

The U.S. leader had earlier thanked Abe and Moon for the role they played in bringing about the summit.

“I think this is something that nobody thought was going to happen for years or more,” Trump said. “And I really believe it’s going to be a great thing for North Korea, a great thing for South Korea and Japan.”

But Trump reserved more explicit praise for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, thanking him and saying he had been “very helpful to us two days ago on something very specific.” It was unclear what Trump was referring to, but Xi and Kim held surprise talks earlier this week in the Chinese city of Dalian, and the summit was likely to have been high on that agenda.

Andrew O’Neil, an expert on North Korea and a professor at Griffith University in Australia, said that the detainees’ release, as well as the upcoming summit, “needs to be seen in the context of Kim’s dual strategy,” which he said consisted of reaching out to the international community in an effort to ease suffocating sanctions and diplomatic pressure and “promoting the internal narrative that the world is now engaging with North Korea — on its terms.”

O’Neil said Pyongyang understood the red-hot anger in the U.S., including on the part of Trump himself, over the death of Warmbier and that Wednesday’s release “would have been authorized with that in mind.”

“The release also helps clear the decks in terms of immediate outstanding issues and Kim will appreciate that it casts him in a favorable light ahead of the summit as well as allowing Pyongyang to claim that it’s shown benevolence, goodwill, etc. just in case Trump pulls the plug on continuing dialogue if a comprehensive denuclearization commitment doesn’t materialize,” O’Neil said.

On Thursday, North Korea made its first official mention of the planned summit, with Kim calling it a “historic” opportunity, state media reported.

Kim, who has conducted a flurry of diplomatic moves in recent weeks, told Pompeo that a summit with Trump “would be a historic meeting” and an “excellent first step” toward the “building of a good future” on the Korean Peninsula, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Over the last two months, the North Korean leader has met with Xi twice as well as with Moon for the inter-Korean summit.

During the meeting with Pompeo, the top U.S. diplomat delivered a verbal message from Trump to Kim, for which the North Korean leader “expressed thanks, highly appreciating that the U.S. president has shown deep interest in settling the issue through dialogue.”

The language was a marked shift from just eight months ago, when the leaders of the two countries traded a series of pointed threats and insults. Pictures released by KCNA and published in the Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party daily, showed Kim and Pompeo laughing together while walking and grinning broadly for a posed photograph.

O’Neil called this “quite extraordinary,” considering the North’s harsh rhetoric and frantic pace of nuclear and missile testing just last year.

“The big question is whether it can be sustained,” he said. “More specifically, can the good vibes at the macro level be converted into detailed outcomes on major issues like denuclearization, mutual recognition, post-armistice negotiations.”

Information from Kyodo added.

The talks, held on Monday and Tuesday, came some 40 days after Kim visited Beijing in March to meet Xi on his first trip outside the country since taking over as the North’s leader in 2011.

 

“As long as relevant parties abolish their hostile policies and remove security threats against the DPRK, there is no need for the DPRK to be a nuclear state and denuclearization can be realized,” Kim was quoted by China’s official Xinhua News Agency as saying, using the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The relevant parties was a clear reference to the United States and its allies that have backed the U.S.-led “maximum pressure” campaign to rein in the North’s nuclear weapons program. Japan has been one of the biggest backers of this campaign.

“I hope to build mutual trust with the U.S. through dialogue,” Kim said. A political resolution of tensions on the peninsula and denuclearization should proceed with the “relevant sides” taking “phased and synchronous measures in a responsible manner,” he added.

Xi said “China supports the DPRK’s adherence to the denuclearization of the peninsula, and supports the DPRK and the U.S. in negotiating and resolving the peninsula issue through dialogue.”

The White House has demanded that North Korea immediately commit to denuclearization, a position that appeared to grow stronger in recent days when newly minted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on May 2 that Washington is committed to the “permanent, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

That terminology went beyond previous U.S. statements demanding the “complete verifiable, irreversible dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.” It was unclear what this discrepancy meant.

China is the North’s sole ally and benefactor, but ties had soured for years under Kim until his March visit appeared to put them back on track.

“After the first meeting between me and Comrade Chairman, both China-DPRK relations and the Korean Peninsula situation have made positive progress. I feel happy about it,” Xi was quoted as saying.

The Chinese leader also said he was willing to meet Kim again “to make joint efforts to push the healthy and stable development of China-DPRK relations, realize long-lasting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and promote regional peace, stability and prosperity.”

Kim said that Sino-North Korean ties, as well as the “Korean Peninsula situation” had undergone “meaningful progress since March.”

“These are the positive outcomes of the historic meeting between me and Comrade General Secretary,” he added.

Xinhua said Xi hosted a welcome banquet for Kim on Monday and the two leaders strolled along the coastline at a government guesthouse and had lunch together on Tuesday.

“At a crucial time when the regional situation is developing rapidly, Kim said he came to China again to meet with (Xi) and inform him of the situation,” Xinhua said.

CGTN footage showed Xi wearing a Western suit and Kim in his standard Mao suit. They stood on a beach, sat on an outdoor deck and strolled through lush gardens.

“In a cordial and friendly atmosphere, the top leaders of the two parties and the two countries had an all-round and in-depth exchange of views on China-DPRK relations and major issues of common concern,” Xinhua said.

Chinese state-run media reports did not directly mention the planned Trump meeting or last month’s inter-Korean summit, but both were likely to have topped the agenda of the Kim-Xi talks.

Trump spoke Tuesday with Xi on North Korea and trade, according to the White House, with both agreeing on the importance of continuing to implement sanctions on North Korea until it permanently dismantles its nuclear and missile programs.

Xi urged Trump to take Pyongyang’s “reasonable security concerns” into consideration, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Xi told Trump that he supports the planned meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders, saying that he “hopes the U.S. and North Korea can work together, build mutual trust” and “consider North Korea’s reasonable security concerns,” the report said.

Media reports had earlier speculated that a high-ranking North Korean official had visited the Chinese city after a private jet belonging to VIPs from the North and an Air Koryo jet had been spotted at the Dalian airport. Footage posted online also showed a convoy of black cars moving through the streets of the city on Monday in a scene reminiscent of Kim’s earlier Beijing visit.

Dalian was a favorite meeting spot for past Chinese and North Korean leaders, including Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

The meeting with Xi came weeks before Kim’s planned summit with Trump to discuss denuclearization in the first-ever meeting of sitting leaders from the two countries.

Trump said Friday that the two sides had decided on a time and place for their meeting, with media reports saying the summit will take place in Singapore in mid-June.

 

Asked on “Fox News Sunday” about the possibility of the U.S. offering a security guarantee to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as part of any possible deal to rid it of its nuclear weapons program, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington will “have to see how the negotiations proceed” but appeared to focus solely on the threat to the United States.

 

“Make no mistake about it: America’s interest here is preventing the risk that North Korea will launch a nuclear weapon into L.A. or Denver or into the very place we’re sitting here this morning,” Pompeo said from Washington.

His comments, just a month ahead of the hotly anticipated July 12 summit in Singapore between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim, are likely to exacerbate lingering concerns that the mercurial American leader may cut a deal that leaves Japan in the lurch.

“U.S. allies will be extremely concerned about statements that seem to suggest the United States cares more about threats to the homeland than to allies,” Adam Mount, a senior defense analyst at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington said, adding that such statements would encourage them “to chart their own course.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged Trump to push the North to give up not only its intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the U.S., but also its short- and midrange weapons capable of striking Japan. He has also secured a promise from Trump that he will speak to Kim about the Japanese who were abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s.

Abe said Monday that he will make sure Trump “directly” fills him in on the outcome of the summit with Kim, apparently underscoring Tokyo’s latest effort to avoid being alienated amid the recent flurry of diplomatic activity on the Korean Peninsula.

The prime minister’s remarks came a day after Japanese media reported the government has been requesting Trump stop over in Japan to brief Abe after the summit.

“After the U.S.-North Korea meeting is over, I would like to directly receive feedback from President Trump on how it went,” Abe told the Lower House Budget Committee without elaborating.

He also said he will speak with Trump before the Singapore talks, when the two meet on the sidelines of this year’s Group of Seven summit in Quebec, Canada, “so we can make thorough preparations together.”

But despite Abe’s wishes, a senior Japanese official said it would be “unthinkable” for a U.S. president to bother stopping in Japan on a return trip from Singapore.

“If they want to refuel in Japan, it does make sense” that Trump would meet Abe, the official said. “But wouldn’t it be easier for them to refuel somewhere else?” the official added, declining to clarify whether Abe is instead planning to travel to Singapore himself and have post-summit talks with Trump there.

Still, despite fears of a possible drift in the alliance, Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University, said that Pompeo and others administration officials’ comments “reflect the core mission related to denuclearization of the North, not broader geopolitical strategic objectives that when taken into consideration necessarily include Japan’s interests.”

Talks at the G-7 and after the summit, Nagy said, will be opportunities for Abe “to press Japan’s concerns and get clarity on the Trump administration’s long-term plan for denuclearization and what that entails.”

Ahead of the summit — the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader — Pompeo praised Trump and also continued to soften the administration’s stance on the nuclear-armed country, saying Sunday that the two nations share common goals.

“No president has ever put America in a position where the North Korean leadership thought that this was truly possible, that the Americans would actually do this, would lead to the place where America was no longer held at risk by the North Korean regime,” Pompeo said. “That’s the objective. … I think chairman Kim shares the objectives with the American people. I am convinced of that.”

Trump’s stated goal is for North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons in a “complete, verifiable, irreversible” way. In return, the U.S. has said it is willing to help the impoverished nation bolster its economy.

The North has claimed that its nuclear arsenal is for defensive purposes and to counter any U.S. plans at regime change, but Kim said last month that his country was shifting to a “new strategic line” that focuses the nation’s resources on rebuilding its economy.

In a separate interview Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Pompeo said that private-sector American entrepreneurs could play a role in this shift, helping rebuild North Korea’s energy grid and develop the country’s agricultural sector.

“We can create conditions for real economic prosperity for the North Korean people that will rival that of the South,” he said.

But he said assurances of the regime’s security — in effect letting Kim stay in power if he met U.S. demands — would also need to be addressed by Washington.

“We will have to provide security assurances to be sure,” Pompeo said. “This has been a trade-off that has been pending for 25 years.”

He did not offer more details, but his remarks could refer to the type of assurances Pyongyang has sought — and received — in the past.

In the 1994 Agreed Framework with the North, the U.S. said it “would provide formal peace and national security assurances” to the country, while a 2005 statement issued during the now-defunct six-party talks with North Korea said the “United States affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade (North Korea) with nuclear or conventional weapons.”

Both agreements later collapsed.

North Korea said Saturday that all of the tunnels at the country’s northeastern nuclear test site will be destroyed by explosion in less than two weeks, while observation and research facilities and ground-based guard units will also be removed. Pompeo praised this as “one step along the way.”

John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, described the types of steps that North Korea would need to continue taking as part of a denuclearization process, including the potential involvement of a processing center in Tennessee.

“The implementation of the decision means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them, taking them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” Bolton said Sunday in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” “It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities,” adding the process would also need to address North Korea’s ballistic missiles.

“I don’t think anybody believes you’re going to sign the complete ending of the nuclear program in one day. But we are also very much interested in operationalizing the commitment as quickly as possible,” Bolton said.

The top Trump adviser also said that the North must also address its abysmal human rights record, including its abduction of Japanese nationals.

But he also struck a contradictory note with Pompeo on Sunday, saying in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that the North should not “look for economic aid from us.”

“I think what the prospect for North Korea is to become a normal nation, to behave and interact with the rest of the world the way South Korea does,” he said.

Japan, meanwhile, has spent the past few months carefully weighing whether it should embark on its own meeting with Kim, a diplomatic gambit that could backfire to the severe detriment of Abe should he fail to win solid concessions from Kim on the long-standing abductee issue.

On Monday, Abe reiterated Tokyo’s willingness to hold face-to-face talks with Kim, following a Fuji TV report last week quoting a diplomatic source as saying that the North Korean leader was left wondering why Japan wouldn’t talk to him “directly about the abductions.”

“Japan can never resolve the abduction issue completely unless it discusses this with North Korea,” Abe said. “We have to make our own efforts to resolve it.”

In a country where there is no Twitter but lots of fake news, North Koreans are getting a very different take than American media-watchers on what got the two leaders to the negotiating table and what they will be trying to accomplish.

 

What North Koreans are hearing is that Kim is calling all the shots. That he is a strategic genius whose bold nuclear policies have opened the door to Korean-led peace talks with the South. And that he has finally succeeded in forcing the leader of the most powerful country in the world to acknowledge their country’s new status.

The message fits in nicely with what North Koreans always hear: that their leaders are essentially infallible.

But unlike some Trump backers who have already begun talking about a possible Nobel Prize, North Korea’s media have been exceedingly cautious not to set expectations for specific concessions from Trump too high or to divulge government positions that might need to be walked back or re-framed if the talks don’t go as planned.

The North’s media didn’t even make their first explicit announcement of the Trump summit until last week.

That news came May 10, the day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang to work out details of the release of three American prisoners and finalize the summit’s venue and its June 12 date. The North’s ruling party newspaper put a photo of Kim shaking his hand on its front page.

The media were at it again this week, warning that hardliners like Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, are ruining the atmosphere of detente by suggesting Pyongyang must unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons before any easing of trade sanctions can begin.

North Korea’s often-stated policy is the exact opposite: that its precondition for denuclearization is an end to Washington’s “hostile policy and nuclear threats.”

Caution over the handling of Trump news aside, the North’s media have been pretty clear in suggesting something big is going on.

They made quite a fuss — albeit after most of the rest of the world had already seen the news — of Kim’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and later his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the south side of the Demilitarized Zone, in April. They have also repeatedly stressed the country is in the process of shifting to Kim’s “new strategic line.”

What the North Korean people, accustomed to seeing Washington as the root of all their problems, make of these developments is undoubtedly more complicated and nuanced.

Largely because of the lack of a free and robust media, Pyongyang is a hotbed of gossip.

It is a safe assumption that with even just scattered bits and pieces of news, the North is by now virtually awash in rumors and that there is an intense curiosity about how relations with Washington are changing, at least among the more educated, affluent urban population.

More than most Americans, average North Koreans have good reason to care.

If the summit goes well, they could see the lifting of economic sanctions that will make their daily lives easier in tangible, essential ways, such as more and cheaper goods at the stores and eased restrictions on what they can do and say. If it doesn’t, they could well bear the brunt of food and fuel shortages, stepped-up work requirements or even preparations for a military conflict.

State media, of course, is also not their only source of information.

Much of the news getting out to the broader population is likely trickling down through the hierarchy of the ruling party. It is then disseminated out to the broader membership, believed to number several million, before spreading to others officially or through conversations or around-the-water-cooler sorts of ways.

That process was set in motion in earnest last month, when Kim called a meeting of the party’s central committee and announced his decision to suspend nuclear tests and ICBM launches. The committee is comprised of more than 100 senior party members and a roughly equivalent number of alternates whose task is to make sure that party policies are understood and implemented throughout the country.

Outside of North Korea, the announcement was widely reported as a major pre-summit concession. But that wasn’t the way it was presented to the party by Kim.

Kim’s pitch was that under his leadership the country had in just five years completed its development of nuclear weapons, which he called a “miraculous victory” that means there is no more need for testing and paves the way for the country to turn its attention to economic growth.

North Korea, Kim announced, will never use nuclear weapons or transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear technology “unless there are nuclear threats and nuclear provocations” against it. He added that the North’s nuclear weapons are “a powerful treasured sword for defending peace” that guarantee future generations “can enjoy the most dignified and happiest life in the world.”

Kim’s message to his own people so far, in other words, sounds a lot like the opposite of denuclearization.

And that is a position Trump probably won’t want to take credit for if Kim decides to bring it with him to Singapore.