The most recent CNN official reports reveal that the Biden administration engaged into a series of attempts to contact North Korea last month using multiple communication channels. According to an anonymous senior administration official, Pyongyang has been completely unresponsive.
Reviewing political intentions
Here is the exact statement of the anonymous official from the Biden administration:
“To reduce the risks of escalation, we reached out to the North Korean government through several channels starting in mid-February, including in New York. To date, we have not received any response from Pyongyang. This follows over a year without active dialogue with North Korea, despite multiple attempts by the US to engage.”
So far, we still don’t know whether there’s a specific reason why the administration insists on contacting North Korean officials; however, the anonymous source pointed out that the main purpose is to review our country’s interagency policy towards the country.
More precisely, the United States wishes to evaluate its future political position internationally as North Korea is becoming a bigger threat for its neighbors.
The possibility of North Korea turning into an international threat is already being discussed with countries such as Japan and South Korea. The Biden administration has also been working with several members from the former Trump administration to evaluate how the relationship between our country and North Korea has evolved.
The outreach attempts have entered the spotlight as many key states around the world are eagerly waiting for Biden’s new North Korea policy to be revealed. Although it’s expected to be announced publicly over the next few weeks, it’s still unclear whether the new administration will stick to the schedule considering North Korea’s lack of communication.
And the situation is getting more and more tense as the country seems to prepare for chaos.
A potential nuclear danger
On February 11th, the satellite Maxar has captured an image that would shake the political world to the ground: a cluster of new structures could be noticed at Yongdoktong, North Korea.
According to the team of experts from the Middlebury Institute, the new structures have most likely been built over the course of last year. The most concerning part is that they may actually be a series of intercalating tunnels that lead to the country’s underground facility where nuclear weapons are being stored.
This isn’t the first time U.S. intelligence agents have noticed strange activity in the Yongdoktong area, as the site has been labeled as a nuclear weapon storage facility for years now.
One of the main goals of the Biden administration is to engage in a process of denuclearization of North Korea. Considering how fast their nuclear facility at Yongtoktong is expanding, though, it’s believed that country leaders are striving to increase their nuclear weaponry production, as well as hiding places, more than ever.
So far, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon has refused to make any public statements regarding the satellite image. However, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki recently declared that President Joe Biden’s view is ‘without question’ that North Korea’s suspicious activity is a major reason of concern for our international security and must be addressed quickly.
However, former U.S. officials such as Rep. Andy Kim insisted on the importance of contacting North Korean leaders before making any public threats or other moves against the country. As recent history of the Trump administration has shown, the more provocative steps we take against the country, the less likely we are to find diplomatic solutions.
Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Adam Kizinger, confirmed that our country’s main goal should be to achieve a ‘nuclear-free North Korea;’ however, he also agrees that this is a very difficult, delicate mission that should be taken carefully step by step.
“Deposing Kim Jong Un is not realistic right now and it shouldn’t be our state of policy. Korean reunification is probably not very realistic, so how do we prevent a nuclear war from breaking out or North Korea from using their supposed of nuclear capability as a way for leverage.”
Achieving diplomacy without communication is impossible, though – and that’s exactly the current stage of Biden’s administration efforts.
This issue only adds to the pile of urgent problems our country is facing right now and problems that Joe Biden must solve to regain the people’s trust in a system that has appeared to crash in 2020.
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