US team lowers expectations for second summit with North Korea's Kim

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be open to seeking a limited deal at this week’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, an approach that may yield small but potentially significant results.

It’s unclear how far either side is willing to go, but officials in Washington and Seoul say discussions have included allowing inspectors to observe the dismantlement of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor and opening U.S.-North Korea liaison offices.

Declaring an end to a technical state of hostilities that has existed since the 1950s, and allowing some inter-Korean projects like opening a tourism zone in North Korea are other possibilities.

“Over the last few months, the U.S. position has shifted considerably, putting in play a range of incentives that had been considered out of bounds, even by previous administrations,” said Adam Mount, defense analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.

Kim pledged in a first summit with Trump in Singapore in June to work toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the two sides agreed that mutual confidence building steps could promote that.

But it soon became clear that the two sides had different idea of what they meant by denuclearization. Follow-up talks quickly ran into trouble over U.S. demands for North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, which Pyongyang denounced as unilateral and “gangster like.”

Trump, keen to present his unprecedented engagement with North Korea as a success, now says complete denuclearization remains the “ultimate” goal, but there is no hurry for this, provided a freeze in weapons testing that has lasted since 2017 remains in place.

Trump has also held out the prospect of easing punishing sanctions on the country, a pressing North Korean demand, if it does “something that’s meaningful” on denuclearization.

Any deal however is likely to face intense scrutiny from American lawmakers and other officials who have expressed scepticism that North Korea is really willing to give up its weapons, and concern that a compromise could undermine the United States’ interests in the region.

The U.S. line has been that sanctions will not be lifted until North Korea has completely denuclearized, but U.S. Special Representative Stephen Biegun said last month that this did not mean “we will not do anything until you do everything.”

But while discussing concessions, the U.S. side was still looking to move quickly “in very big bites,” a senior administration official said on Thursday. “We are not looking to have incremental steps as a key driver of this process.”