Senior Chosun Workers’ Party secretary Kang
Sok Ju is to visit Europe later this week, it emerged earlier today. Kang, a veteran
diplomat whose career dates back to the Kim Il Sung era, previously played a decisive
role in many North Korean foreign policy initiatives, not least the 1994
“Agreed Framework” under which Pyongyang vowed to end its development of nuclear
weapons in exchange for nuclear technology and fuel oil.
According to government sources, Kang is to
visit Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy during the four-country trip.
It is thought that the North Korean side is targeting talks with EU officials during the Belgian leg.
As the incumbent
Party International Secretary, Kang, a maternal relative of the Kim family, is officially
responsible for party-to-party interactions, a role that Hwang Jang Yop
held prior to his defection
in 1997. As such, the trip
is expected to nominally take the form of talks with political
parties in the host countries.
However, the symbolism of 75-year old
Kang’s role in the U.S.-North Korean denuclearization dialogue of two decades ago,
as well as his relatively limited overseas trips in recent years, evidence the
widespread suspicion that there is more on his agenda than this.
The visit fits into a broader
pattern of regional diplomatic moves in recent weeks and months. In the middle
of September, Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong is to give a speech to the UN General
Assembly in New York. The news of Ri’s planned trip emerged last week, at
around the time as a South Korean newspaper reported that an unknown U.S.
official recently visited Pyongyang. Both events come as North Korea and
Japan continue their bilateral dialogue in pursuit of a resolution to the
abductees issue, something that has dogged relations across the East Sea for years.
There is also the suggestion in South Korea
that Kang’s visit could bring more unofficial talks with U.S. officials. If so,
it would not be the first time that the two sides had conducted unofficial
interactions in Europe. More concretely, on the 10th, during the time that Kang is set to visit
Switzerland (Sept. 11-13), a seminar will be held in Geneva concerning the
Japanese abductees issue. As a result, it is believed that senior Japanese officials will be in the city.
The South Korean government did not comment
on the likelihood of Kang meeting with officials from either Japan or the
United States during the visit.
