WONSAN, North Korea: A small group of foreign journalists arrived in North Korea on Tuesday to cover the dismantling of the country’s nuclear test site later this week, but without South Korean media initially also scheduled to participate.
Pyongyang is allowing the limited access to the site to publicize its promise to halt underground tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. It unilaterally announced that moratorium ahead of a summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.
The eight South Korean journalists were excluded because Pyongyang has cut off high-level contact with Seoul to protest an exercise with the US military. Amid growing concern over the success of the summit, South Korean President Moon Jae-in was to meet with Trump in Washington later Tuesday.
The group that arrived by charter flight from Beijing is made up of media from the UK, Russia, China and the United States. The journalists, including an Associated Press Television crew, will stay at a hotel in this port city on North Korea’s east coast before traveling by train to the site, which is in the northeastern part of the country.
The dismantling ceremony is expected to be held in the coming days, depending on the weather.
The North’s decision to close the Punggye-ri nuclear test site has generally been seen as a welcome gesture by Kim Jong Un to set a positive tone ahead of his summit with Trump.
But it is mainly just a gesture.
The North has already conducted six underground tests at the site — including its most powerful ever, last September — and Kim told ruling party leaders last month that further testing is unnecessary.
North Korea could build a new site if it decides it needs more testing or could dismantle the tunnels into Punggye-ri’s Mount Mantap in a reversible manner. Details of what will actually happen at the site are sparse, but Pyongyang’s apparent plan to show the closure of the site to journalists, not international nuclear inspectors, has been raised as a matter of concern.
The North’s decision to exclude the South Korean media, however, was a more troubling sign of discord.
The South Koreans were expected to participate in the trip, but were left behind in Beijing after the North refused to grant them visas. The South’s Yonhap news agency reported the North refused to accept a list of the reporters on Monday, making it “technically hard’ for the South Korean media to join the event.
The exclusion, a sharp departure from the conciliatory mood between the Koreas since the South hosted the Olympics in February, deepens a standoff that began last week when Pyongyang signaled it would cut off all high-level talks with Seoul in response to the joint military exercises.
The North claimed the exercises involved US strategic nuclear assets — including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers — and violated the spirit of detente on the peninsula. Washington denies the bombers were part of the drills. That same day, Pyongyang also warned Kim might “reconsider” the US summit over hardline comments from Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton.
Bolton suggested the North must denuclearize before it can receive any reciprocal benefits from Washington. Pyongyang insists the precondition for denuclearization is for the US to end its “hostile policy.”
Foreign media arrive for North Korea nuclear site closing
Foreign media arrive for North Korea nuclear site closing
- Eight South Korean journalists were excluded because Pyongyang has cut off high-level contact with Seoul to protest an exercise with the US military
- The exclusion, a sharp departure from the conciliatory mood between the Koreas since the South hosted the Olympics in February, deepens a standoff that began last week
No sign of progress on first day of Ukraine war talks in Geneva
- Two previous rounds of negotiation between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi failed to yield a breakthrough
- Trump put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal, saying they “better come to the table, fast”
GENEVA: Ukrainian and Russian negotiators concluded the first of two days of US-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Negotiations will resume on Wednesday.
The United States has been pushing for an end to the nearly four-year war, but has failed to broker a compromise between Moscow and Kyiv on the key issue of territory.
Two previous rounds of negotiation between the two sides in Abu Dhabi failed to yield a breakthrough.
The latest talks “were very tense,” said a source close to the Russian delegation.
“They lasted six hours. They have now concluded,” the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address he was ready “to move quickly toward a worthy agreement to end the war,” but questioned whether Russia was serious about peace.
“What do they want?” he added, accusing them of prioritising missile strikes over “real diplomacy.”
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The ensuing conflict has resulted in a tidal wave of destruction that has left entire cities in ruins, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and forced millions of people to flee their homes.
- ‘Come to the table, fast’ -
Zelensky has repeatedly said his country is being asked to make disproportionate compromises compared to Russia.
US President Donald Trump on Monday put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal, saying they “better come to the table, fast.”
Russia occupies around one-fifth of Ukraine — including the Crimean peninsula it seized in 2014 — and areas that Moscow-backed separatists had taken prior to the 2022 invasion.
It is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal, and has threatened to take it by force if talks fail.
But Kyiv has rejected this deeply unpopular demand, which would be politically and militarily fraught, and signalled it will not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.
Russia has been slowly capturing territory across the sprawling front line for months.
But its war-time economic worries are mounting, with growth stagnating and a ballooning budget deficit as oil revenues — choked by sanctions — drop to a five-year low.
Ukrainian forces recently made their fastest gains in two-and-a-half years, recapturing 201 square kilometers (78 square miles) last week, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War.
That total includes areas Kyiv and military analysts say are controlled by Russia (72 square kilometers), as well as those claimed by Moscow’s army (129 square kilometers).
The counterattacks likely leveraged the disruption of Russian forces’ access to Starlink, the ISW said, after the satellite Internet firm’s boss, Elon Musk, announced “measures” to end Russia’s use of the technology.
- Breakthrough hopes low -
For the talks in Geneva, the Kremlin reinstated nationalist hawk and former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky as its lead negotiator.
Ukrainian national security secretary Rustem Umerov was leading Kyiv’s side.
Hopes for a breakthrough are low.
Even before the talks were underway, Ukraine accused Russia of undermining peace efforts by launching 29 missiles and 396 drones in a series of attacks overnight that authorities said killed at least four people, wounded others and cut power to tens of thousands in southern Ukraine.
“The extent to which Russia disregards peace efforts: a massive missile and drone strike against Ukraine right before the next round of talks in Geneva,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on social media.
A Russian drone strike killed three staff of a power plant in the frontline town of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to energy minister Denys Shmygal.
Another person was killed in the northeastern Sumy region, local officials said.
Russia meanwhile accused Ukraine of launching more than 150 drones overnight, mainly over southern regions and the Crimean peninsula — occupied by the Kremlin in 2014.
An oil depot in southern Russia caught fire, according to officials.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists to expect no major news from the first day of talks.
