US President Donald Trump's repeated mention of North Korea as a "nuclear power" might be an effort to lure Pyongyang back to the negotiating table as the recalcitrant regime wants "de facto" US recognition as a nuclear-armed country, a preeminent US expert said Friday.
Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also noted that Trump appears to be holding out the prospects of the next US-North Korea negotiation being about threat reduction rather than denuclearization despite his stated pursuit of the "complete denuclearization" of the North.
Cha made the remarks during an event on his new book, titled "The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea," a rare full-length publication on the subject.
"(Trump) is trying to lure North Korea into a negotiation, right? And one of the ways of doing that is sort of dangling this idea out there that the next negotiation with North Korea will not be about denuclearization, (that) it will be about a threat reduction," he said.
Trump's labeling of North Korea as a nuclear power has spawned a flurry of speculation over whether he deliberately used the term, or is ignorant of what it implies or just underscored the reality of Pyongyang's evolving nuclear program.
Adding to speculation was Trump's recent juxtaposition of North Korea alongside India and Pakistan, the two de facto nuclear powers -- a move that could signal Pyongyang can also gain a similar nuclear status as that of the two countries rather than being under persistent global opprobrium for its "illicit" nuclear arsenal.
Cha said that Trump's remarks on the North might be a deliberate move rather than something out of ignorance.
"Do we go around saying our goal with India is denuclearization? No. Even with Pakistan, do we go around saying our goal is denuclearization? We don't say that. So that's why I think he's starting to group them together," he said.
"So, it's not Trump being stupid. It's actually Trump being quite clever. I think he has a plan."
The US' recognition of the nuclear status is a rare objective that North Korea eagerly wants from the US, given that Pyongyang now relies on Moscow for food, fuel, security aid and other help, while the need for sanctions relief has all but dissipated with Russia and China not faithfully complying with sanctions, Cha noted.
"The one thing that I think North Korea doesn't have, that it wants from the United States ... that is quite important to North Korea, is de facto recognition as a nuclear weapon state," Cha said, casting the achievement of that recognition as a national objective of the regime.
The scholar also said that Trump does not appear fixated on the North's denuclearization, as he puts his priority on a more pressing priority -- the protracted war in Ukraine.
"He's a very pragmatic person. So given the size of the (North's nuclear program), I am sure that he thinks there's no way they are going to give up all this stuff," he said.
"And that his frame of reference for North Korea is not denuclearization, but it's the war in Ukraine in the sense that as part of a peace deal, he's going to want North Korea to stop sending troops and ammunition to Russia."
Cha's remarks came amid expectations that Trump might seek to revive his direct leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim, which led to three summits between them -- the first in Singapore in June 2018, another in Hanoi in February 2019 and the other in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in June 2019.
Days after Trump took office for a second term in January, he said he will reach out to Kim again, calling the dynastic ruler a "smart guy." (Yonhap)
